Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Prologue

On a divine astral plane populated by eternal beings called celestials, one stood out with magic beyond compare. The others feared this individual's strength and split them into two separate beings, casting the halves to opposite ends of the cosmos.

But the two halves, the Sundrop and Moonstone, found each other again. Rather than recombining, they fell in love. And instead of wielding the great power they had as one being, their magic worked together through their love and commitment to the other. The Sundrop on her own held the power of life, healing, light, energy, and organics; the Moonstone on her own held the power of death, decay, darkness, matter, and inorganics; and together, they were again able to do anything.

They did not seek control over others. They merely wished to live in harmony with the rest of their home, enjoying the love they shared. But the other celestials, again afraid of their power being together, did a trick to cast the Sundrop and Moonstone out and bind them to a mortal plane in the form of a flower and rock, far apart from each other.

The Sundrop and Moonstone could not move - they were stuck where they landed. But the Sundrop could send out roots and the Moonstone could send out spikes of black rock and for years they searched for each other under the earth until they found each other in the middle, the roots holding onto the rocks like holding hands so they could be together again. And they stayed like that for millenia, clinging to each other deep underground, until the Sundrop was suddenly ripped from the earth.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

The Moonstone knows immediately that the Sundrop is gone - their physical contact with each other had maintained a psychic connection that was abruptly severed. The Moonstone, outraged, sends out black rocks in search of her wife.

The Sundrop and Moonstone depend on each other to be their best selves. Without the Moonstone, the Sundrop's ability to create boundaries disappears. She wants to help people, and will do so even if it destroys her. So when she is torn from the earth, sensing the urgency and grief of the guards around her, she does not fight back. She allows herself to be turned into an elixir and given to the ailing queen, and she is reborn without memories fused with a human child. The king and queen's daughter is a hybrid: both human and celestial.

The princess Rapunzel is stolen away nearly immediately by the woman who wishes to abuse her powers of restoration and regeneration. Rapunzel remains trapped for eighteen years as the Moonstone desperately continues to send out her black rock spikes in search of the Sundrop, ravaging landscapes between the Dark Kingdom and Corona.

Rapunzel is freed from her tower by a dashing rogue who learns how to care about others by bearing witness to her pure heartedness. He sacrifices his own life for her freedom, her captor is destroyed, and he is resurrected through a tear because Rapunzel's magic resides within her and not just in her hair. The two become best friends, he and the pub thugs who aided Rapunzel's escape are pardoned for their past crimes by the crown, and he is given lodgings in the castle in thanks for rescuing their princess.

A few months after Rapunzel is freed, her new friend and Lady-in-Waiting Cassandra discovers the black rocks that have just recently emerged where the Sundrop once grew. When she brings Rapunzel there, the Moonstone senses her presence. The rocks glow blue at Rapunzel's proximity and when she touches one, the Moonstone desperately attempts to restore their psychic link. Rapunzel's celestial half reacts in fear, not recognizing the Moonstone's magic, and the stones explode. The rush of foreign magic brings out her own, and her hair is restored.

Although the Moonstone could not reconnect to her wife, she had spent so long in fear of the Sundrop being harmed that at her touch the Moonstone completed a partial switch of their powers: the Moonstone granted Rapunzel invulnerability to keep her safe, allowing her also to access the decay spell. In return the Moonstone received Rapunzel's power of advanced regeneration and her ability to access the healing spell.

Despite the initial failure with reconnecting to her wife, the Moonstone refuses to give up. She senses the Sundrop's proximity still and sends black rock to try to reach her. Rapunzel and Cassandra flee in fear from the rapidly approaching spikes.

Even once her wife has escaped her range of sensing, the Moonstone knows she must be nearby, so she sends spikes to pierce the surface in Corona with more frequency and intensity.

Eventually, she again senses her wife against one of her spikes, and she tries to restore their connection. Rapunzel's dormant power reacts again to the unfamiliar magic, and the spikes explode. And again the Moonstone refuses to give up, and she gives chase.

Rapunzel had intended for the spikes to explode, to take out the masked men chasing her and her friends. She did not intend for the spikes to pursue her, trapping them in her tower and causing them to jump off of the roof to escape, with Rapunzel for the first time accessing her magic to move her hair to protect them. Rapunzel's tower collapses from the onslaught of black rocks, but their jump took Rapunzel out of the Moonstone's range of sensing, and the Moonstone is again forced to give up her chase.

The Moonstone recognizes that her plan has not been working so the next time she senses her wife, she does not immediately seek to restore their connection. When she feels the Sundrop against her, she waits to see what she wishes to do. Even without their psychic link the Moonstone can sense the Sundrop's fear of something around her, and the Moonstone sends spikes to destroy the threats.

Varian's automatons are speared by the rocks, leaving only his mecha. Rapunzel's hair had reacted on its own to the spikes around her, seeking the rocks as the roots of the original Sundrop flower would. The Moonstone extends more spikes carefully towards Rapunzel again, who grabs hold of them with her hands. Sensing the Moonstone through her direct contact, her power is further awakened and she sends out a shockwave to take out Varian's mecha.

Cassandra is thrown in the blast and struck by black rock shards that tear open her shoulder. While she heals - Rapunzel does not leave on her journey until Cassandra recovers - a tiny piece of black rock from the shrapnel of the explosion is embedded in her shoulder.

The Moonstone realizes that for whatever reason, she cannot connect to the Sundrop psychically, and the Sundrop is capable of moving. She sends black rocks to destroy the wall and point in the direction of the Dark Kingdom for the Sundrop to follow.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

On Rapunzel's journey, when Rapunzel touches the black rocks nothing happens anymore. She can't control them or explode them, because the Moonstone no longer sends magic to her through the spikes - and the stones no longer glow blue in her presence - so she doesn't react to it. The Moonstone has a plan: leading the Sundrop to her. She doesn't need to do anything else.

Rapunzel learned from her father and documents retrieved in Varian's laboratory about a dark power responsible for the spikes, which only attacked Corona because her father uprooted the Sundrop that had protected them. Early in Rapunzel's journey she meets Adira, a researcher who tells Rapunzel that the dark power, the Moonstone, resides in an abandoned and ancient kingdom far to the east. She explains that she and her team had discovered the Moonstone decades ago, and since then she had been seeking its counterpart, a light power, that would cancel out the dark and protect the world from it. She tells Rapunzel that she is that light power, the Sundrop, and it is her destiny to reunite the two powers. And if she does not, the Moonstone would continue to send out its spikes in search of her until it has destroyed the world.

The Moonstone can vaguely feel Cassandra, especially when she touches one of the black rocks. This gives the Moonstone an idea: she knows that the Sundrop obtained some kind of form that freed her from being stuck in one location, and she thinks that she could get a form like that too. As the group's journey progresses Cassandra begins having dreams of the Dark Kingdom and the Moonstone's chamber that she can only vaguely remember when she wakes up.

When they approach the Great Tree, Adira shares that the others in her team had different ideas of how to go about managing the Moonstone that they uncovered. She and Quirin sought to find its light counterpart, while Hector and Edmund sought to keep anyone from ever finding it and unlocking control of its dark power. She warns that the closer they get to the Dark Kingdom, the more likely they'll encounter the two who stayed behind. Shortly after her warning they fight off Hector, who tries to kill them to keep them from completing their journey.

In the Great Tree Adira tells the group that it was once the lair of the evil sorcerer Zhan Tiri. They discover a room full of documents in the Tree, including ancient writings on the Sundrop and Moonstone. Rapunzel finds an incantation similar to her healing spell, and when she uses it she's overtaken by a dark spell of decay that she's only snapped out of when Adira pushes her into water.

Cassandra is becoming increasingly frustrated with Rapunzel. She always felt pushed aside and not given a chance in Corona, where her father refused to work towards changing Corona law to allow a woman - her - into the guard, despite her proficiency in weapons and law that exceeded most of his men. Even when he had been put out of commission when Varian kidnapped the queen, leaving the guards without a leader, he refused to recognize her as the most worthy replacement and chose one of his other guards. She only rarely got assignments from him for guard work and was told to continue working as a maid, orders that she followed out of fear of his old threat of sending her to a convent if she disobeyed him.

With Rapunzel, Cassandra had gotten used to a respect she never had before. For the first time in her life she was being listened to and made to feel important. Spending every day with the princess since a couple weeks after her liberation from the tower, Cassandra taught Rapunzel much about the castle, Corona, and the outside world in general. Rapunzel thought she was amazing, knowledgeable, and real, and she was delighted to have Cassandra as a guide and companion. She put a great deal of trust in Cassandra and even looked up to her, never considering her or treating her like the servant that her position dictated she was.

This changed as their journey went on. Rapunzel dismissed Cassandra's importance as her (unofficial) bodyguard, acted like Cassandra's excessive focus and planning for their journey to continue smoothly was an inconvenience rather than the only thing keeping them moving, and stopped listening to Cassandra's advisements on decisions for their journey. Worse still, she refused to acknowledge the change in her behavior, and when Cassandra finally confronted her in the Great Tree about how Rapunzel was being foolish for trusting Adira blindly, Rapunzel snapped orders at her to stop her from speaking. Even when Rapunzel felt some uncertain guilt afterwards she botched the apology, simply telling Cassandra that Cassandra will need to get used to them disagreeing, especially when Rapunzel becomes queen.

So Cassandra swallows her frustrations. Shortly after their argument and not-quite-reconciliation, Hector attacks the group again. The fight results in Hector getting possessed by the evil heart of the Tree - Zhan Tiri's magic. When Cassandra tells Rapunzel that she could defeat him if Rapunzel helps her escape from the vines, Rapunzel ignores her and uses the decay spell instead. The spell works in taking down the heart of the Tree, leading the rest of it to start collapsing. Rapunzel is frozen again from the spell and as the rest of their friends flee, Cassandra runs to Rapunzel and tries to shake her out of the trance so she could escape. Touching Rapunzel during the spell burns Cassandra's right arm up to her elbow with a terrible curse of decay: it becomes blackened, gnarled, the skin pulled taught against her bones and tendons, rendering it dramatically weakened. Rapunzel tries to help her but Cassandra refuses to let her look at it, hiding it in a glove and then under a suit of armor she finds scattered among the Tree's wreckage.

They spend three days trapped in the House of Yesterday's Tomorrows, at which time Zhan Tiri's servant attempts to trap Rapunzel in a dream world in order to drain her magic and set Zhan Tiri free. Rapunzel escapes, but not before her magic is used to allow Zhan Tiri to materialize as a phantom and show Cassandra the memory of her young childhood. With Rapunzel free, Zhan Tiri is again banished.

When the group finally arrives at the Dark Kingdom, they find a wasteland under low-hanging, ominous clouds that cast the entire landscape in shadow. There is no greenery around the ruins of a grand palace, perched on a cliff, only stark stone and huge spikes of black rock. The wind that blows towards them from the wasteland is cold.

A man with black armor, hood made from a bear's head, and an enormous axe tries to keep the group from getting to the palace. After their fight, Adira speaks to the man - Edmund - and convinces him that they have the power of light that could finally stop the Moonstone. Rapunzel's hair glows with their proximity to the palace, and at the sight Edmund relents, knowing that even if their plan did not work at least they were not there to use the power for evil.

Cassandra's had a strong sense of déjà vu since they first laid eyes on the Dark Kingdom in the distance, but as they approach the palace it becomes overwhelming. She's not said anything to her companions, caught somewhere between not thinking it important and not trusting them. When Edmund tells the group that they'll need to find a roundabout way into the palace because more black rock has appeared to prevent them from going through the front gate, Cassandra ignores him and approaches the black rock doors. Without thinking she removes the gauntlet on her left hand, pushing her knife into the skin to release blood that she presses to the stone. The doors immediately glow blue and recede.

Everyone else in the group is severely alarmed by this, but Cassandra behaves as though she doesn't even register anything out of the ordinary. Entering the palace she finally admits to Rapunzel that she feels like she's done all of this before.

It's only a minute later that Cassandra stops and tells Rapunzel that she has done all of this before.

She turns to Rapunzel and says, "This isn't about you… It was never about you. This is my destiny. The Moonstone chose ME." Before Rapunzel can respond, Cassandra turns and takes off down the corridor, spikes of black rock turning blue and receding in front of her to let her pass. The spikes reappear behind her, so even as Rapunzel runs after her she cannot catch up.

When Rapunzel reaches the Moonstone chamber, Cassandra is standing in front of its pedestal. Rapunzel tries to call out to her, and Cassandra draws her sword and points it at Rapunzel while angrily telling her of all her grievances: Rapunzel casting her aside, no one appreciating her or giving her a chance, Gothel's abandonment of her, how she's always been kept powerless, Rapunzel being condescending and a bad friend, to name a few. She says again that the Moonstone chose her and that taking it is her destiny. Rapunzel tries to answer her but Cassandra turns and grabs the Moonstone, releasing a huge blast of energy that knocks Rapunzel to the ground.

The Moonstone is thrilled. Her time is at hand. She will finally be freed from her immovable state and have the ability to reconnect with her wife.

However, the Moonstone isn't as good with organics as the Sundrop is. And the Sundrop was reborn without memories, which is a dramatically different process than a young adult human and a spirit with many millennia of memories trying to fuse into one being.

The ground shakes and Rapunzel hears a terrible shattering all around her as every black rock in the chamber fractures into tiny pieces and showers to the ground. She pushes herself up to look towards the Moonstone's pedestal as the energy blast subsides, and she sees Cassandra collapsed in front of it, electric blue magic zapping off of her. Cassandra pushes herself up as Rapunzel did, and Rapunzel sees her hair has turned a bright blue and that the Moonstone is set under her left collarbone in a new armor of black rock. Rapunzel gets up just as Cassandra does, and she tries to call out to her friend to ask if she's okay.

But that is not Cassandra. The shattering of black rocks mirrored the shattering of Cassandra and the Moonstone's minds in their attempt to combine. The Moonstone-Cassandra hybrid standing in the chamber is left with all of her memories and sense of self - from both halves - in pieces. She does not understand what Rapunzel is saying to her, where she is, who Rapunzel is, nor who she is. A fleeting fragment passes through her mind, and she remembers how badly she wished to escape the chamber. She summons black rock to break an exit in the wall away from Rapunzel, and she takes off without saying a word.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

The Moonstone-Cassandra hybrid (M-C) does not only flee the chamber, but also the wasteland of the Dark Kingdom. She reaches a forest and remains there for several months, only able to hold onto some memories or sense of self for brief periods before she loses them again. She tries desperately to figure out who she is and what she's doing. She's confused and misses her wife, except she's mad at her wife and also doesn't have a wife. Being able to perceive visuals is new and overwhelming except it's not, she wonders where her astral home is but that place doesn't make sense and this one does. Fragments of her memory try to build in her mind but none of them fit together and she falls to pieces again very easily. She doesn't eat or sleep anymore.

Meanwhile, Rapunzel and her friends are brought back to Corona with great urgency via airship to liberate the kingdom from the Saporians. Rapunzel re-befriends Varian and they rescue the kingdom. For months Rapunzel acts as interim queen and tries to help her parents recover their memories. She throws herself into her work to distract from how her best friend betrayed her, but when she lays down to go to sleep at night she can no longer occupy her thoughts with tasks, and she often falls asleep crying from her heartbreak.

The first time Rapunzel sees or hears from Cassandra again is when M-C shows up in Corona and tries to kill Frederic in the throne room during Eugene's birthday party.

In the wilderness, M-C had two thoughts at once that managed to stick firmly in her mind: her wife was taken, and the Coronan king dug up the special flower. The combination of these thoughts led her to Corona to get revenge on the king who took Flower Wife.

Rapunzel doesn't understand what's happening. M-C shows up in Corona after months of no contact to attack her father, snarling barely-coherently about how he took someone and that he's a monster. Rapunzel tries to lasso M-C and restrain her, and they begin to fight as people flee.

M-C doesn't recognize Rapunzel as Flower Wife. She actually doesn't remember anything about Flower Wife, only that she was really, really important. She decides to destroy the kingdom that took Flower Wife - Corona's crest becomes a trigger for her - and she throws Rapunzel away from her, knocking her out.

Rapunzel's friends carry her with them to flee as M-C begins summoning huge spikes of black rock to lay waste to the castle, and then the capital city surrounding it. Royal guards lead civilians to evacuate, and before long the citizens have all fled the city that has been ravaged entirely by spikes. As people fled they felt the air grow cold around them, and witnessed plants lining the windows and streets of the city wither with unnatural speed.

But M-C does not stop there. She leaves the island to begin wrecking the mainland as well, leaping with unnatural strength between giant spikes of black rock that she summons. Plants wilt and the air chills around her wherever she goes. Eventually every Coronan has either escaped the kingdom through the main gate of the wall or fled to Old Corona by the wall breach to evade the rampage. Rapunzel, with her family and friends in Old Corona, finally wakes up and is horrified.

M-C, seeing a lot of Corona, remembers more bits from her life as Cassandra. Besides the things that make her even more agitated, like a sense of no control in her life and a vague fear of being sent away, she remembers that the name of the important flower was the Sundrop. (She forgets it was her wife, though, and pretty much everything else.) Arriving at Old Corona, Rapunzel is ready to fight her again to defend her loved ones, but M-C stops her rampage and demands that they give her the Sundrop.

Rapunzel tells M-C that she can't do that because the Sundrop is literally inside of her. M-C, pacing and increasingly on edge, says that then she'll take Rapunzel.

But Rapunzel is acting queen now, and she knows she can't abandon her people. Rapunzel tries to get M-C to talk to her, but M-C doesn't have much to say on account of how she's already forgetting who all these people are and having random flares of anger from seeing Rapunzel, who she is mad at for a reason she doesn't remember. She says that if Rapunzel doesn't give her the Sundrop she won't stop at Corona, she'll start destroying the rest of the world too. Rapunzel, horrified by the threat, tells Eugene and the others to lead the rest of her people out of the breach in Corona's wall to take refuge in another kingdom, and that she'll stay with Cassandra in Corona. She thinks that she might be able to get through to Cassandra and have everything go back to normal.

M-C experiences one singular thought that isn't overwhelmed by anger: she has the vaguest memory of Rapunzel leading the Coronans during the ice storm and becomes certain that if Rapunzel isn't there to lead them, they would all die. The vague memory from her past carries a sense of responsibility that makes her not want that to happen to them, as she has already forgotten she just destroyed all their homes and ruined their lives.

M-C tells Rapunzel that she can go with them, but that Rapunzel has to come back. She wants Rapunzel to spend half of her time with her. It's the summer so she says that Rapunzel has to come back on the fall equinox and stay with her until the spring. And Rapunzel has to come alone.

Rapunzel, extremely confused and frustrated by these terms, submits to them because she has no other choice. M-C feels another flare of anger that makes her demand all the Coronans leave - Corona and everything within the walls is hers now. Her demand is spurred on by the fear she experienced during her rampage, her old memory of being scared of being sent away. So she refuses to leave her home, but she also cannot bear to have the Coronans around her, who had largely been disdainful of her since she was a child for being a tomboy. She is also confusing the Coronans in her mind with vague memories of the other celestials - she thinks they're terrible and cannot be trusted. The Coronans don't have much to stay or fight for, so they take everything they can and leave through the wall's breach.

The Coronans go to Arianna's home kingdom as refugees. Rapunzel and her extended family spend months rehousing people and trying to help everyone build a temporary new life until Rapunzel can get through to Cassandra. Rapunzel goes back to Corona before the equinox to try to talk, but M-C has built up huge walls of black rock where the Corona walls used to be - much higher ones. She even has wavebreakers of black rock that prevent ships from getting to Corona by sea, far off of the shore of the capital's island. The wavebreakers connect to her walls, so her new domain is completely surrounded. No one can go in or see in. Dark clouds hover above Corona, the way they did in the Dark Kingdom.

Unable to do anything else, Rapunzel focuses on helping her people.

Rapunzel is sure that she won't need a full six months to get through to M-C. She is, characteristically and in spite of everything, optimistic. But she and Maximus still take a carriage that has some of Rapunzel's belongings and food supplies when going back towards Corona on the fall equinox. A team of royal guards and her friends accompany her to Corona's edge as well.

"You know you don't have to do this, blondie," Eugene tells her when they arrive at the wall.

"If we believe her threats - which, I don't see any reason why we shouldn't - yes, I do," Rapunzel answers. "It'll be fine, I'll get through to her. We've always been able to make up in the past. And besides, I spent eighteen years with a madwoman," she says offhandedly, looking up at the foreboding black walls. "What's six more months?"

The black rock recedes to form a gateway where Rapunzel's carriage approaches, but M-C's not at the entrance. Instead there are two black horses with glowing blue eyes. When they approach, Rapunzel sees that the horses are made from interlocked pieces black rock like clockwork, and they move almost mechanically. When they stand still they're unsettlingly motionless, like statues. It appears that M-C was serious about Rapunzel coming alone - she won't even let her come in with Max. They unhitch Max from the carriage to let one of the horse specters take his place, and Rapunzel hands off Pascal to Eugene.

Upon seeing the specters, every one of Rapunzel's friends tries one more time to convince her not to go. But Rapunzel tells them it's okay, that Cassandra is her friend and she's sure it will all work out.

And so she passes through the gate, the rocks sealing seamlessly behind her.

Chapter Text

Rapunzel sits at the front seat of her carriage and she enters what used to be Corona with the two horse specters.

It's bleak. The green vegetation has entirely vanished. It reminds her very much of the Dark Kingdom's wasteland. Black spikes litter the landscape and trees stand with bare branches, looking as if they were petrified and turned to stone. The sky is dark and clouds hang low. It's bizarrely twenty degrees colder and Rapunzel's glad she packed winter clothes and had Pascal stay with Eugene. The only living things, as best as she can tell, are huge bioluminescent mushrooms and fungi she'd never seen before that have appeared among the trees. Even the living things still around thrive on dead things.

Rapunzel's heart breaks for her kingdom.

She doesn't see Cassandra, which is bizarre to her. Rapunzel assumes the horse specter will take her to where Cassandra is, and it continues walking towards what used to be Corona's capital with the other specter walking behind them.

It's unsettlingly quiet. The lack of birds or wind through vegetation makes it completely silent and still. If it weren't for the horse specters moving, she would have thought she was stopped in time.

When they crest a hill, Rapunzel sees Corona capital for the first time. There are still the huge spikes pointing skywards that ravaged the city, but parts of the castle have been built back up with black rock. Rapunzel assumes that's where Cassandra has been living.

The capital is just as bad as the transformed dead forests she passed through initially. Seeing what used to be a lively, cheery, bustling place in silent ruins is almost too much to bear. If she didn't feel the responsibility to her people to witness what has become of their homes, she would have closed her eyes.

Her grief gives way to anger. How could Cassandra do this? And where is she? She demands that Rapunzel come here, but doesn't show her face?

Deep down Rapunzel feels a flash of fear. What if Cassandra was hurt? Or dead? It had been months of her alone in this wasteland. Rapunzel feels ridiculous for feeling fear for the person who turned her home into this. But there is obviously something severely wrong with Cassandra. She had been saying things that didn't make sense before she went berserk. And while she sounded angry at Rapunzel in the Dark Kingdom, Rapunzel was sure that none of it could lead her to do… this.

She gets to the castle courtyard, still with no sign of Cassandra. Rapunzel is uncertain of what to do - should she even take her bags out of the carriage? Should she ask the horse to bring her back to the wall? But it had sealed behind her. Rapunzel gets off the front seat and walks past a massive collapsed door to enter the castle's front hall. It's empty, nothing but spikes and debris and shredded tapestries. She turns around to walk back to the carriage and she sees M-C sitting cross-legged on the roof of it, her chin propped up on one of her hands, watching Rapunzel with no expression.

Rapunzel feels a powerful wave of anger. M-C doesn't respond when Rapunzel shouts at her asking where she's been and how she could do all of this. She just sits, motionless, and stares. Rapunzel pauses and wonders if she's hallucinating Cassandra, but M-C abruptly stands.

"Your room is the same as it was before." M-C says expressionlessly. "You can bring your own bags up to it." Her face twists and she snarls, "I am not a servant."

Rapunzel is taken aback by the sudden anger. "I didn't say you were," she mutters, and is about to say more but M-C jumps off of Rapunzel's carriage and with inhuman strength leaps from the ground to the wall of the castle over a story up, catching a spike she shoots out of the wall. She uses spikes to keep jumping up the sheer face of the castle and away from Rapunzel until she disappears out of Rapunzel's line of sight.

Rapunzel hadn't seen M-C's rampage, when she was leaping between giant spikes, so this is new to her. "Alright then," she mutters. "Talk to you later."

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

It takes Rapunzel a while to bring all of her bags to her room. With the castle empty of everyone and many holes in the walls from damage done by spikes, Rapunzel thinks to herself that this will feel more like camping than sleeping in her home. She starts exploring the castle, finding parts of it in ruin and parts entirely replaced by black rock, turning corridors in different directions and lined with torches that burn with blue fire to light the new hallways.

Bizarrely, she finds some parts of the original castle that had been destroyed fixed. The walls and windows had the stones and glass put back into place, held by black mortar that Rapunzel is certain is black rock. She stops, staring at this work for a while. It's a lot of stones that were put back. Did Cassandra do this all herself? Why? How much time did it take? How did she even figure out how all the pieces went back together?

Just as bizarrely, she finds parts of M-C's black rock castle destroyed, in piles of rubble like parts of the original castle. Rapunzel is certain the only way this could be done would be by Cassandra herself. She destroyed parts of her own work?

"I guess she needs hobbies," Rapunzel says to herself.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Walking through the corridors and castle rooms, occasionally Rapunzel finds a black rock spike with a face so smooth that it casts reflections.

On every one of these, the spot right where Rapunzel would be able to see her face standing in front of it has been scratched out. Or where Cassandra would see her face, Rapunzel thinks to herself. Rapunzel has seen Cassandra's new rock armor - the gauntlets are clawed. She gouged out the image of her own face wherever she saw it.

The library is almost completely destroyed. The ceiling caved in over large parts and the bookcases were knocked over and covered with rubble. Rapunzel picks up a couple of books that are salvageable, and brings them with her on the rest of her tour. She'll need things to occupy her, she suspects, between times Cassandra confronts her.

The kitchens are in better condition than the library, but Rapunzel notices a thick layer of fine rock dust on every surface.

"So she hasn't been cooking anything," Rapunzel notes. She frowns. It's a wasteland outside: no crops to grow or game to hunt. "What is she eating?" The remains of the castle's food storage is split between scraps of things that had been eaten by pests - likely before the kingdom turned completely to this bizarre world - and food that was stale and molding but had kept to some extent from the new cold. It seemed like the remaining food was untouched, definitely not like someone had been living off of it for months.

Cassandra's room is entirely gone. The rooms of the stories directly above it had collapsed so her room became filled with rubble that even poured out into the hallway from her open door.

"Then where is she staying? And sleeping?" Rapunzel asks herself. She wishes Pascal were with her, at least for someone else to bear witness to the state of the castle and its new mysteries.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

When Rapunzel gets back to her bedroom, M-C is waiting for her. She's standing in the middle of the room, motionless, and Rapunzel jumps when she opens the door and sees her.

Rapunzel shakes off her surprise. "Alright Cass," She begins. She had a lot of time to think about what she was going to say. "Please, let's talk. I want to know why you did this. I want to know why you want me here."

M-C's blank expression turns into one that looks as though she's considering a puzzle. She stares intently at Rapunzel for several moments. "I don't know," she finally answers, still emotionless.

"You- what?" Rapunzel says in shock. "You don't know? What does that mean, Cass?"

M-C walks towards her until she's directly in front of Rapunzel, still staring at her face. Rapunzel swallows and keeps herself from flinching away. Her hair starts to glow from M-C's proximity, and she glares up at her.

"But with you here, I'm going to find out," M-C says. Rapunzel frowns, trying to figure out what she means. She realizes that Cassandra had ignored her response, and was continuing her first thought.

Rapunzel is uncertain of what to say but opens her mouth to speak anyway, and abruptly M-C turns away from her. She leaps across the room towards Rapunzel's open window and jumps over the edge. Rapunzel rushes over - it's a sheer and very far drop - but when she looks outside she sees nothing but a few black rock spikes sticking out of the wall.

Rapunzel leans back. Cassandra must have swung away again like a lemur and disappeared around a corner or through another window.

Rapunzel sits on the edge of her bed and puts down the books she was holding onto. Cassandra said she didn't know - what? Why she did all of this? Why she wanted Rapunzel here? Both?

How could she not know? How is Rapunzel supposed to get through to someone who doesn't understand her own actions?

Rapunzel lays back on her bed. What is she going to do.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel decides she can't just sit around waiting for Cassandra to come back again. She leaves her room and goes to explore another part of the castle she still had yet to check - her parents' wing. Having looked through most other rooms and found them largely untouched besides the initial destruction, she suspects that Cassandra is staying there. At least, it's where her largest black rock annex attaches to the castle.

Her parents' room seems untouched as well, as are the additional parts of their suite: dressing rooms, sitting rooms, personal offices, rooms reserved for bathing…

Rapunzel walks up the newly-added spiraling staircase of black rock at the end of one of the castle corridors. She feels like she's been climbing forever around the spiral, only broken up by blue-flamed torches and small arched windows alternating every ten feet, when she reaches the top: an opening that leads to a flat, round platform perched on the tower. It's huge and without any adornments nor fence around the edge, and offset from center so that most of it hangs over open air. Rapunzel is startled - she had expected to find a room that Cassandra is staying in, hopefully with Cassandra in it. She walks out onto the platform and looks around: it's higher than any other part of the castle and offers a view 360 degrees around her, so she can see the vast sea stretching to the horizon, the capital city surrounding the castle, and the wasteland beyond the bridge - its bleak rolling hills and the huge wall of black rock in the distance.

Rapunzel stands transfixed for a moment: she'd never had such a view of Corona like this before. She wonders what it would have all looked like unravaged by Cassandra's destruction. It's not even really Corona anymore, she thinks to herself.

Thinking about the cold, the empty ruins of the city, the dead and petrified vegetation, and the abundance of decomposer fungi, she decides to call it Underworld.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel knows she'll have to return to her room at some point soon - the sun somewhere beyond the heavy clouds is starting to set, and she'll need to build up a fire in her room's hearth so she could stay warm for the night and make something to eat from the food supplies she brought with her. (She elected not to use the kitchens, far away in the castle and lacking in cleanliness. She was used to making meals like this on the road, anyway.) She's glad that the firewood stockpiles in the castle had not petrified like the woods outside, so she has something to work with.

Rapunzel is walking back towards her room through the great hall when she encounters M-C, entering from the opposite side.

"Cass!" Rapunzel immediately calls to her, and runs over. She's tired of Cassandra fleeing - she needs to have a real conversation with her.

M-C looks startled by Rapunzel appearing before her. Apparently she's unused to being the one being ambushed. Rapunzel continues: "Cass, we have to talk. You said you don't know why you did all this, right? The Moonstone did something to you, something bad. It's not safe, and you need to give it to me."

M-C stares at Rapunzel blankly.

"Cass, please, I'm trying to help you," Rapunzel pleads with her. "We can put an end to all of this right now. Please, give me the Moonstone." Rapunzel holds her hand out towards M-C.

M-C looks down at herself, where Rapunzel had been looking. "That's me," she finally answers.

Rapunzel's eyebrows draw together in confusion. "What? No, Cass, I'm talking about the stone that's in your armor. You have to take it out and give it to me." Rapunzel wants to do it herself, but she's afraid of what might happen when she touches it. At least if Cassandra hands it to her, Cassandra can jump away from whatever blast might ensue… she certainly wouldn't be able to if it was still in her chest.

M-C's face abruptly shifts with anger. "I don't take orders from you," she snarls. She claws out in front of her, Rapunzel snatching her hand back just in time to avoid the blow, but Rapunzel's struck from the side by black rock shooting out from the ground and goes sprawling.

M-C has started walking towards another door out of the great hall, but Rapunzel refuses to let her get away again. Shaking off her dizziness and standing up, she pulls down her hair to lasso her.

"I'm not letting you leave," Rapunzel says, careful to avoid any imperatives, "until we talk this out."

M-C looks back over her shoulder, wrapped in Rapunzel's hair. Her armor glows blue for a moment before sending out a blast that pushes Rapunzel's hair away from her, and she jumps from the constraint.

Raising her arms over her head and striking her forearms together, black rock shoots out of the ground in every doorway, blocking them in. The temperature in the room drops.

Rapunzel feels uneasy at this development.

"If I can't leave," M-C answers, "Then neither can you."

Rapunzel is nervous, but at least Cassandra hasn't run away again. "Cassandra, please," she begins. "Whatever you're going through, I want to help. We can fix this, all of this," she says, gesturing around them. "And we can do it together. We've always been able to make things right."

M-C scowls at her again. "That's what you think," she responds. "Everything done by your rules in your time. Your little game of pretend that everything's okay. I'm sick of it, and I'm sick of your condescension. Don't act as if you're my friend."

Rapunzel winces at the venom in her voice. Her words echoed some of the things she had said to Rapunzel in the Dark Kingdom. Rapunzel pauses, not wanting to say anything rashly. She needs to get her words right.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I thought things were okay between us. That's… obviously not the case. I haven't been trying to be condescending. I promise I'll try to make things right, but I need your help. I need you to talk to me so I know how to change."

M-C stands glaring at her in silence. Rapunzel repeats, "Please, Cass, talk to me."

"I already have," M-C answers. "So we're done."

She turns and starts walking towards a doorway again, the black rock glowing blue and receding before her.

"What am I supposed to do, Cass?" Rapunzel calls after her. "Why am I here? Are you just going to keep me locked here because I have the Sundrop?" Rapunzel's voice gets a hard edge. "Don't turn into your mother, Cassandra."

M-C glances over her shoulder. "You're free to leave the castle. You have free rein of the kingdom within the walls." She looks forward again, away from Rapunzel. "If anything I'm like your father."

"I didn't like that either!" Rapunzel shouts at her as she exits the room. "You know that, Cassandra!"

But she's gone. Rapunzel puts a hand to her face, frustrated. Cassandra wouldn't talk to her. She's back at square one.

I need to come up with something else, she thinks.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Over her dinner by firelight, she starts writing notes out.

• Cassandra's angry with me. She thinks I'm a bad friend. She thinks I've been condescending. Apparently all the times I thought we made up she was actually resentful of me(?)

Rapunzel feels her eyes misting and tries to blink it away. She thinks about all the times they had fought and made up. She remembers Cassandra's smile and how they'd hug. Is it possible that it was all an act from her?

Rapunzel remembers how Cassandra pretended to be her friend during the Contest of the Crowns. Is it possible that all of the two years they'd spent together was a lie? That she doesn't actually know Cassandra at all?

"I can't believe that," Rapunzel whispers to herself. "If that's true… then I don't know anything. Nothing in my life would be real. She's too important to me. She has to be who I think she is."

Rapunzel moves on.

• The Moonstone did something to her… probably. She controls the black rocks. She only did all of this after taking the stone. She was saying things that didn't make sense. She said the stone chose her and that she had seen the Dark Kingdom before.

Rapunzel sighs. She doesn't know what to make of this. Unless she could get the stone away from Cassandra… she can't do anything about this.

• The Moonstone is dangerous. It destroyed that kingdom it was in. It made a wasteland there, and now it's made one here. According to the document in the Great Tree, the decay spell is the Moonstone's power. Adira says it's able to destroy the world.

This point is terrifying. She notes again that getting the Moonstone is definitely top priority, although likely not possible until she's on better terms with Cassandra.

• Cass is a hothead and she keeps getting mad when she sees me. I have to wait it out until she calms down. Then maybe she'll talk to me.

Rapunzel leans back. Cassandra had told her that she didn't like resolving things on Rapunzel's time or by Rapunzel's rules. So Rapunzel will have to wait until they can resolve things on Cassandra's time by Cassandra's rules.

Rapunzel thinks about how stubborn Cassandra is. "I will die of old age before she approaches me to make up." Rapunzel sighs. "But I guess I don't have a choice."

She thinks about how Cassandra is prone to being overdramatic when she's upset. Rapunzel hopes that's why she said all those things that made Rapunzel so scared their friendship wasn't real, and that she doesn't actually mean it. At least not some of it.

"I mean, she has to want me around. She literally made me come here and is keeping me here," Rapunzel reasons. "She said it's about the Sundrop but it's not like she can do anything with it… I think. At least, she hasn't done anything to me… yet. But she said that she wanted me here so she'd find out why… she wanted me here? Well that's circular logic."

Rapunzel recognizes that she'd probably go crazy trying to figure out Cassandra. More so than usual.

• I have six months to make this right. Presumably with Cassandra controlling the black rocks, they won't destroy the world like Adira warned about. As long as Cassandra doesn't decide to destroy the world, of course. But she said she wouldn't if I came.

Six months. And she'll probably need every second of it. Rapunzel sighs again and puts a hand to her face. She had assumed she'd be here a couple weeks at most. She'll have to figure out how to get more food.

"I guess I'll have to ask Cass…" she says to herself. "I mean, she has to tell me, right? She wouldn't just let me starve… probably."

• Cass keeps appearing and disappearing. I don't know where she goes or what she's doing. I can only talk to her for brief times before she takes off again.

Rapunzel frowns. What could she possibly be doing? As far as Rapunzel knows, Cassandra's main interests can be distilled to "weapons" and "fighting." Sometimes reading and hunting and navigating. Oh, and making fun of people. But there's no one here to fight or make fun of.

"Maybe that's why she wants me here," Rapunzel notes uneasily. As for the other things, Rapunzel's pretty sure there's nothing to hunt, and Cassandra has no need for navigating or mapmaking here in Corona. Or Underworld.

"I guess she's been… reading?" Rapunzel reasons. "Collecting weapons?" Rapunzel thinks of the parts of the castle that have been bizarrely and meticulously rebuilt. "Or getting new hobbies."

This brings her to her next point.

• Besides the way it's become a wasteland, there are other strange things about the castle. Cassandra has built back original parts that she had broken, and broken new parts that she had built. Cassandra has scratched out every reflective surface where her face would be. I can't find a place where Cassandra is staying. I don't know what she's eating. And it appears she's all alone - not even animals are here. Not even Owl.

Rapunzel decides most of this falls within 'trying to figure out Cassandra will drive me insane' territory, but writes it anyway.

The rebuilt parts of the castle she has no answer for. Cassandra never had patience for jigsaw puzzles in the past, so Rapunzel can't imagine her doing such meticulous reassembling now. The destroyed parts make some sense: Cassandra has a temper, and also has fun breaking things. She can make new structures so easily now, it would be nothing to her to tear down old ones.

The scratched reflective surfaces are bizarre. She doesn't want to look at herself? From... guilt? But if she felt so guilty, then why wouldn't she make up with Rapunzel and let the kingdom go back to normal? She's keeping everyone out and keeping it as a wasteland, so obviously she can't feel too guilty about it all.

There is one mirror untouched as far as Rapunzel has seen: the vanity mirror in Rapunzel's bedroom. Cassandra did say that her room was the same as it was before, so it's possible Cassandra just hasn't been in her bedroom much and hasn't looked at the mirror.

Hopefully where Cassandra is living will be answered when Rapunzel continues her exploration tomorrow.

Rapunzel has no answer for the lack of animals. Cassandra loves animals! Much, much more than she likes people. Rapunzel can almost understand an unstable Cassandra driving everyone in Corona away, but the creatures? Was it an accident caused by the Moonstone's power? Even Owl isn't with her… as far as Rapunzel knows. She really hopes that he's here, somewhere. Although the fact that Cassandra wouldn't even let Max in isn't promising. And there are those… horse-things. It seems she could animate black rock creatures, like automatons. But surely those specters don't compare to real animal company.

Rapunzel flips back through her notes to read everything again.

"Well," Rapunzel says to herself. "It's a good thing I like puzzles."

Chapter Text

Second Day

Rapunzel's new plan: be as nice as possible. Keep gathering information.

She's frustrated that this is the best she could come up with, but she doesn't have many other options. She's afraid of worsening things by confronting Cassandra, so she'll just try to be as nice as possible and remind Cassandra of the friendship they had. And when words fail, gestures work, right?

"I should paint her something," Rapunzel says to herself the next morning in her room while making breakfast. "Or make her something. A friendship bracelet, maybe."

Rapunzel almost laughs at the thought of a friendship bracelet saving her kingdom. That's a little optimistic, even for me, she thinks.

But she should make something. And it should be something really special, that shows that Rapunzel really does care about her. Maybe something from one of their best memories together?

Looking around her room in thought, she sees the massive mural of birds in flight she painted when her father had her imprisoned shortly before she left on her journey.

"Maybe I should paint a matching mural somewhere else in the castle," Rapunzel mutters. "An addition to the 'Rapunzel gets locked up by her loved ones' series."

But the birds give her an idea. One of her best memories with Cassandra? When they were flying together! As birds! Cassandra didn't like it at first but when she and Rapunzel got going they had so much fun. Rapunzel could paint them as birds in front of the view they had in the sky.

Rapunzel's so excited that she smiles at the memory. And Cassandra would remember how ready Rapunzel was to give up everything for her, because Cassandra is everything to her.

She sees that she still has a collection of canvases stored by her bookcase and decides she'll start on it once she's finished exploring. She still had yet to go through parts of the castle like the gardens and prison.

And the tunnels. But with all the damage done by the spikes, she'd be afraid of it caving in on her. More than she's usually afraid of that.

I'm gonna start with the other ones, Rapunzel thinks.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

While she's walking down from her room, she sees M-C in a parlor off from the hallway, staring out a sizable hole in the wall towards the coastline.

"Cass," Rapunzel says, rushing in. She's not even sure what she's going to say - apologize for being a bad friend? Assure Cassandra that she's going to try to be better? Ask Cassandra about how she's feeling? But M-C cuts her off without looking at her.

"What was she like?"

Rapunzel stops in her tracks. "What- was who like?" She asks, haltingly.

M-C's gaze doesn't leave the view in the distance, and she stays motionless with her arms crossed. "Gothel," she answers.

Rapunzel feels herself go cold. This is not a conversation that could end well.

"She… wasn't a good person, Cass," Rapunzel answers, praying Cassandra would drop the subject.

"I know that," M-C responds. A moment passes, and Rapunzel hopes that's the end of it - but she continues.

"What else?"

Rapunzel watches M-C's motionless form nervously. "I don't think this is a good idea, Cass. She's gone. It doesn't matter what she was like."

M-C finally glances at her, just barely turning her head to look at Rapunzel from the corner of her eye. "It matters. Tell me."

Rapunzel remembers her plan of being as nice as possible, but she thinks that telling Cassandra about Gothel would not fall under "nice", no matter how much Cassandra wants to hear it.

"I'm sorry," Rapunzel answers. "But I won't. It's not good, Cass. You already heard a lot when I first left my tower… there isn't much else."

M-C turns fully now and walks towards Rapunzel with her stoic expression. Rapunzel holds her breath but stands her ground. M-C gets very close to her - she's only a few inches taller, but Rapunzel feels like M-C is towering over her.

"I always knew you were selfish," M-C says, looking down at her. "But I never thought of you as cruel."

Rapunzel is about to answer, to argue that telling her about Gothel would be the real cruelty, when M-C turns sharply from her. She jumps out of the room through the collapsed section of the wall, landing on a spike she shoots out from the castle's exterior, and from there she leaps out of Rapunzel's sight.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel feels miserable as she walks through the castle's prison. The doors are all left open, a vestige of when the guards freed everyone to escape Cassandra's rampage, their crimes immediately pardoned by the circumstances.

She goes over their earlier conversation again and again in her head, wondering if she did the right thing.

Cassandra called her cruel for refusing to talk about Gothel. Rapunzel frowns. Why would Cassandra even want to hear about Gothel?

She remembers conversations she'd had very early in her relationship with Cassandra - as Rapunzel was shown new places and things in the castle for the first time she'd talk about how amazing it all was, and at Cassandra's confused prompting Rapunzel would tell her about her life in the tower. Even before they were friends Cassandra was horrified to hear about things like how she'd only thought there were three books in the world, how her 'mother' would leave her alone for days at a time, how she'd do all of the cleaning and cooking in her tower since she was a child, how she had been in only two rooms in her whole life - her bedroom and the main part of the top of the tower.

Rapunzel remembers a couple days after Cassandra was assigned as her lady-in-waiting. Her mother - her real mother, Arianna - gave Rapunzel fanciful dresses and Cassandra helped her try them on. Looking in the mirror Rapunzel apologized for being so plain-looking, saying she was undeserving the beautiful dresses. Cassandra asked why Rapunzel would think that of herself, and Rapunzel explained that she just was - she knew it because her 'mother' would tell her.

In response Cassandra had stepped over to Rapunzel, put her hands on Rapunzel's shoulders, and told her very seriously that it wasn't true. That Gothel had lied to her to put her down. That Gothel was a bad person.

It was jarring for Rapunzel to hear. Until that point everyone had avoided talking directly about Gothel to Rapunzel. (Now, Rapunzel understands that everyone was probably nervous of upsetting her by bringing up her recently-deceased kidnapper.) It was also one of the first times Rapunzel had seen Cassandra's true self and not the demure front she'd been putting on.

As she walks through the empty prison, Rapunzel scowls. Cassandra knows how awful Gothel was, from her kidnapping and imprisonment of Rapunzel down to her emotional manipulation. Cassandra was the first person besides Eugene to explain it directly to her! Why would Cassandra want to hear anything about that woman?

Rapunzel takes a deep breath. Surely it's connected to the terrible revelation that Gothel had been her mother, and that she abandoned Cassandra as a toddler. That must have been an awful vision to see.

And Rapunzel had learned that her parents were actually royalty who loved her, while Cassandra learned her mother was actually a dead madwoman. Rapunzel winces at the thought. She starts to understand some of Cassandra's anger in the Dark Kingdom when she was telling Rapunzel about this… Even if none of it was Rapunzel's fault, it was just so unfair.

Rapunzel frowns. At least Cassandra had her adoptive father - the Captain is great! And Cassandra got to grow up in the castle and free to explore wherever she'd like in Corona. As far as unfairness goes, surely they must be equal.

I guess her anger about this is just another thing I'll hope will blow over, Rapunzel thinks. I can't do anything about it… and I don't want to tell her more about Gothel, for both of our sakes.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

After her inconclusive and disappointing search of the remaining parts of the castle through the morning - finding neither Cassandra nor a place she might be residing - Rapunzel returns to her room to eat and start working on her gift. Alternating between painting and reading through the afternoon, Rapunzel feels uneasy at how quickly she shifted back into her old habits from her tower.

At least she can go for walks through… an Underworld. There aren't even the trees and grass that so delighted her when she first left her tower. Nor birds or other animals… except for those unsettling horses. Rapunzel wonders if they're still there in the front courtyard.

When leaving her room again to mitigate some of the nervousness that had been building up in her, she decides to check.

The horse specters are still there with her carriage, like statues. Rapunzel notices that one of the horses is slightly bigger than the other.

Almost like Max and Fidella, she thinks. Oh that's creepy.

Rapunzel walks over to them, and they don't move. The blue light still burns in their eye sockets, the same color of the torches in Cassandra's black rock corridors. She waves her hands around the horses' faces, but they still don't move.

She puts her hand against not-Max's head and squeaks in alarm when the horse pushes back against her hand.

The horse had transformed with her touch: it was no longer a statue but stood like a natural horse would, small shifts in its body and flicking its tail. Rapunzel snatches her hand back, and the horse returns to being a statue.

"Nope, I'm good," Rapunzel says, laughing nervously. "That's okay actually. I'm going to leave now."

She walks very quickly back to her room, looking over her shoulder before going into the castle to make sure the horses didn't follow her.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Later, Rapunzel's writing at her desk in her room when she feels the temperature drop. Looking behind her she sees M-C several steps away, motionless and staring at Rapunzel's papers.

Rapunzel is startled and tries to think of something to say, but M-C speaks first: "What are you doing?"

Rapunzel feels a bolt of nervousness. She hides it and decides to be honest. "I'm writing letters to my friends and family. They'll be sending a messenger pigeon here soon and I want to send something back." She knew Cassandra would find out anyway, so she might as well be upfront. If she forbids it, well… Rapunzel will just have to come up with something else.

Rapunzel braces herself for an outburst, an explosion of anger for breaking the 'no other person or animal allowed' rule, but it doesn't come. Looking away from Rapunzel towards the floor, M-C mutters, "You never sent me any letters."

Rapunzel's jaw drops. M-C's tone was that of a sulking child. She had the hint of a pout on her face. Rapunzel suppresses the first thoughts that come to her mind: "Well, they didn't destroy my kingdom," or "Why would I have thought you wanted letters from me, as far as I can tell you hate me."

She remembers her plan of being as nice as possible. "When I go back I'll send you letters," Rapunzel responds.

M-C nods, just barely, without looking at Rapunzel. In an abrupt and familiar motion she turns and jumps out towards Rapunzel's balcony, and she vanishes over the edge.

Rapunzel stares at where M-C disappeared.

"You never sent me any letters either," she mutters to herself.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

"I should offer her food," Rapunzel thinks aloud to herself. "Then that could start a conversation about where she gets her food and how she's cooking it. Maybe I could pull enough ingredients together to bake her something… like those blackberry rolls she loves."

It's night, and she hadn't seen M-C again that day. She's laying in her bed with the fire still burning in her hearth, when she notices stars through her window.

Rapunzel immediately sits up. Stars? But the whole kingdom is enshrouded in clouds! She wraps a blanket around her shoulders and climbs out onto her balcony, looking up at the entirely clear sky.

The stars seem to be burning brighter, even, than they did before Corona had transformed. Without smoke and light rising from the castle and capital below, and with the sharp coolness of the air, the stars are as clear as she used to see them in her tower in the mountains.

It's a new moon, too, so there is no other brightness to take away from their shine. Rapunzel sits on her balcony and stares at them, mentally tracing her constellations out. She wishes she had someone there with her to talk to. At least in the tower she had Pascal.

She wonders if somewhere else in the castle, Cassandra is looking at the stars too.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Third Day

The next morning, Rapunzel brings her guitar down to one of the gardens. There are no flowers and the dark clouds have returned, but she still feels the need to get out. She plays her guitar and sings, starting to make up new songs when she's exhausted the ones she knows. She tries to put a cheery spin on the environment around her. There's beauty in everything, right? Stone can be… pretty. Even the black rocks have complicated prism shapes just under the glassy surface.

As she finishes a song, she feels the back of her neck prickle. Her head snaps up to look around, and she sees M-C standing on a balcony leaning against the railing, watching her.

She lifts a hand to wave, but M-C turns and walks back into the castle.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

"Come with me," M-C's voice comes suddenly from behind her, and Rapunzel jumps. It was later in the day and M-C had snuck up on her as she was walking through the castle.

"Huh- what?" Rapunzel asks, looking back at her, but M-C had already turned and started walking quickly down the hallway in the opposite direction.

"I- okay," Rapunzel answers, slightly exasperated. She has to half-jog to catch up to M-C, who somehow walks faster now than she did before.

"Where are we going?" Rapunzel asks, trying to put a bright spin on her voice to hide how she's feeling, which is a mix of annoyance and fear.

M-C doesn't answer. Figures, Rapunzel thinks to herself.

They reach the front hall, and M-C walks out the entryway. Nooo not towards the creepy horses, Rapunzel internally laments.

It gets worse. Once Rapunzel gets outside she sees M-C has unhitched not-Max from Rapunzel's carriage, and the horses' bodies are shifting slightly as saddles rise from the black rock and reins materialize from their heads. In M-C's presence, they both act as regular horses would.

"Uh," Rapunzel starts, as M-C mounts not-Fidella. "I'd rather not."

M-C stares back at her. She and the horses become motionless, which is worse.

"Do I have to?" Rapunzel asks. She wants to fulfill the 'be as nice as possible' plan, but she also very badly does not want to touch or even see the creepy horses ever again.

Rapunzel receives no answer. Do it for Corona, she thinks to herself as she very reluctantly walks down the steps towards not-Max.

Not-Max is as patient a horse as actual Max is, and despite her hesitations she's able to get into the saddle easily. M-C pulls not-Fidella's reins, and they canter towards the courtyard gate.

Please don't be bringing me somewhere to kill me, Rapunzel thinks as she taps her heels to not-Max's sides.

They ride down through the destroyed capital and towards the city's bridge. The horse specters do not tire, so they're able to ride without slowing down at any point. Rapunzel looks out at the water as they cross the bridge, imagining the night that Cassandra had snuck her out and brought her beyond the wall to the rocks. Rapunzel sighs, wishing she could take that night back. How different everything would be.

They ride along the main road, and Rapunzel almost wants to bring not-Max to a gallop and instigate a race between her and Cassandra like old times. She refrains, obviously. For one thing she doesn't know where they're headed, for another it's entirely possible that Cassandra is presently boiling over with rage towards Rapunzel. Her neutral mask had turned into anger enough times that Rapunzel is sure she has no idea what's happening in Cassandra's head regardless of expression.

They approach the large black rock wall where Corona's main gate used to be, and M-C slows not-Fidella to a stop. Rapunzel follows suit. What is she doing?

M-C doesn't look at Rapunzel as she raises her right hand in its blue gauntlet. There's a sound of rocks shifting as spikes burst out of the wall in front of them. Rapunzel flinches and throws her arms up in front of herself at the abrupt eruption, and not-Max doesn't move. Straightening and putting her hands down, she sees that M-C's spikes formed… stairs. Stairs to a point high in the wall where there was a window with a hook at the top of it. Rapunzel recognizes it: this was the same appearance of her window in the tower, where she used her hair to carry Gothel up and down and, eventually, to leave the tower herself.

M-C says nothing, and she pulls not-Fidella's reins to start trotting back up the main road towards the capital.

"Wh- wait!" Rapunzel shouts. She brings not-Max around to chase M-C. "What is this?!"

"You're free to leave," M-C responds neutrally as Rapunzel pulls up next to her.

"Wh-why? What?" Rapunzel is overwhelmed with questions.

"The island," M-C answers, not looking at her. "You were sad. You couldn't go home so you were sad. I don't want you to be sad. So you can leave."

Rapunzel stares at her, speechless for a moment. "Why now? Why even act like you were trapping me then?"

"I was," she responds. "I didn't understand. Now I do. You're free to leave."

Rapunzel feels whiplashed. It reminds her of the bizarre conversation they had in Old Corona, when Cassandra demanded that Rapunzel stay with her and a minute later insisted she leave.

So she's furious with me and sick of me but… also doesn't want me to be sad? Rapunzel questions internally. Maybe this is a trap. A test. Like, if I try to leave, she'll destroy the world because I didn't keep my promise to her.

Rapunzel stops not-Max and looks back at the wall while M-C continues on.

Well, even if it wasn't a trap, I don't want to leave yet, Rapunzel thinks. I need to get through to Cass and get the Moonstone and fix Corona.

She brings not-Max into a canter to catch up with M-C, and rides by her side.

M-C glances at her. "You haven't left," she notes.

"No," Rapunzel answers. "I promised you I'd stay with you, and I'm staying. But thank you, Cass," she adds. "Just knowing the option is there… It makes me feel a lot better. To know I'm not trapped."

M-C makes a small "hm" sound, and looks back at the road in front of them. They ride back to Corona castle together in a silence Rapunzel hopes feels companionable to her.

Chapter Text

Fourth Day

The next morning Rapunzel's curled up in a window nook reading in one of the castle's sitting rooms when a black-gauntleted hand grabs the top of the book she's holding and hurls it across the room.

Rapunzel stares up at M-C, who had silently appeared before her. "Wh-" Rapunzel stutters. "What was that??"

M-C sits in the window nook across from her. "Talk," she says in her now-standard emotionless manner.

Rapunzel sits up. "What…" Rapunzel begins, "do you want to talk about?"

M-C stares at her in silence. Rapunzel stares back, into her eyes that have become the same blue of her hair and the stone in her chest.

Rapunzel wishes she had her gift painting done, but she supposes she can work with this. "Cass, I wanted to tell you again that I'm sorry. I know we're really different, and I shouldn't have kept insisting that our friendship was always by my terms-"

"Talk about something else," M-C says, looking out the window.

Rapunzel is taken aback. What? She says that she's sick of me pretending that everything's okay, but then stops me from addressing when there's a problem?? Rapunzel takes a deep breath through her nose. Right, doing things in her time by her rules. Okay then.

"Um, sure," Rapunzel answers. She has no idea what to talk about. She's nervous of talking about something that would set Cassandra off - which could be anything. She decides definitely not to talk about the new state of Corona, or things that happened between her betrayal and reappearance, or even their memories together… which doesn't leave much.

"I could… tell you about a book I read yesterday," Rapunzel offers uncertainly.

M-C doesn't react, which Rapunzel takes as a not-bad sign. At least she's not asking about Gothel again. Rapunzel thinks back to details from the book she read.

"It was about woodworking," Rapunzel begins. "It listed all the physical qualities of different kinds of lumber, and ways to carve or shape them, and had building techniques…"

M-C remains with her, sitting like a statue looking out the window, while Rapunzel talks. Even as she's thinking of the book to describe everything she remembered, Rapunzel notes traits of M-C that she hadn't noticed before, since she'd never been so close for so long. M-C's skin is paler than Cassandra's was. It looks inhumanely pale, like she has no blood. Even her lips have a bluish tint. In the low-light of the room Rapunzel sees that her eyes and hair are definitely glowing. Her armor is so dark it seems to swallow light, except for the sections that are a medium-toned blue, which are some lines around her legs and torso and the long gauntlet on her right hand. Her hand damaged by the decay spell.

It's been almost a year - Rapunzel wonders if it's healed by now. She badly wants to ask Cassandra about it, but that would definitely fall in the 'topics likely to make Cassandra explode' category.

"Er, that's all I can remember," Rapunzel says, after talking for a while. "Do you… know anything else about woodworking?"

M-C's gaze has not left the window. As far as Rapunzel can tell, her eyes haven't even shifted.

"No," she answers, and abruptly stands. Rapunzel almost jumps at her motion after her long stillness.

M-C breezes out of the room without another word. Rapunzel is uncertain whether to count this as a step in the right direction or not.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel's staring at a wall of black rock in the throne room when she sees M-C walking past one of the doorways.

"Hey Cass!" She calls, trying to make her voice upbeat. M-C stops and, after a moment, walks into the room. Rapunzel continues, "I was thinking of painting a mural here to brighten the place up. Is that okay?"

M-C scowls at her. "Do what you want," she responds darkly.

Rapunzel's smile falters for a moment. It seems that Cassandra's not a fan of her this afternoon. "Uh, okay," Rapunzel answers. "Do you have any requests?"

"I don't care," M-C says, turning away and leaving again. Rapunzel decides it'd be better not to push things with her right now, and lets her go.

But at least now she can bring some more color to the Underworld castle. She's having trouble deciding on exactly the colors and lighting she wants in her gift painting to Cassandra, and she thinks being able to paint freely somewhere would help her work through her decisions.

She brings her paints down from her room and takes the brush to the wall, no plan in advance, just painting from her heart. She does consciously avoid any scene that Cassandra might recognize, so she makes up a new landscape of cliffs by the sea with rolling hills and forests on the land, seagulls over the water and the sun overhead.

It takes her several hours but finally she stands back, satisfied with her work. It really does brighten the entire room, she thinks. It's not her best, obviously, but it's a beautiful scene and helped her think through the kind of lighting she'd use on her painting for Cassandra.

Rapunzel's gathering her supplies to return to her bedroom when M-C walks through the large entryway at the end of the throne room.

"Cass!" Rapunzel calls, waving. "Wanna see the mural I made?"

M-C walks over with her neutral expression, until she looks at the mural.

"Pretty, huh?" Rapunzel says, turning to her with a smile, and she sees M-C's face transform with rage.

M-C doesn't say anything as she lunges towards the wall with her teeth bared, sending her gauntleted hand squarely into the center of the mural. The black rock buckles under her blow and Rapunzel staggers back. M-C tears her hand to the side, ripping out huge chunks of painted stone and sending blue sparks flying. She slams her other hand into the wall, sending more cracks through its face, and strikes it again and again until it fully collapses.

She's left standing in front of the rubble, breathing heavily.

"W- What the heck, Cass??" Rapunzel shouts, overcome by anger and no longer bothering to hide it. "I worked hard on tha-"

"I didn't like it," M-C snarls, turning aggressively towards her.

"I don't care!" Rapunzel yells. "You said I could paint whatever I wanted and I worked hard on it! You can't just destroy things you don't like!"

M-C huffs and looks away from her, but says nothing.

Rapunzel scowls at her. "Why would you do something like that?"

"I didn't like it," M-C repeats in a voice that starts to sound sulking.

Rapunzel's anger flares again. "That's not an excuse to break things! If you didn't like it, you should've told me to change it! Or you should have told me in the first place what to paint! I'm not a mind reader, you didn't tell me there were things you wouldn't like!"

M-C doesn't respond for a few moments and looks away from the debris. Rapunzel waits expectantly, hoping for an apology.

"I was looking for you," M-C finally mutters in a new tone. "I wanted to show you…" M-C trails off and abruptly says, "Come with me," while turning quickly away from her destruction and walking towards a door on the opposite side of the throne room.

"Wh- Absolutely not!" Rapunzel yells in disbelief. "You just come in here and destroy my work and tell me to follow you? No!"

M-C turns to her with a serious expression. "You have to."

"I don't have to do anything, Cass!" Rapunzel answers. "And I'm certainly not going to do anything with you until you apologize!"

M-C starts to pace, agitated. "You have to," she repeats, looking at Rapunzel intensely. Rapunzel sees that more spikes have bristled from the back of her shoulders, like a cat with raised hackles.

"Then apologize!"

M-C bares her teeth while making a sound familiar to Rapunzel, a frustrated-Cassandra "arrrh".

Rapunzel crosses her arms.

"It was bad and I'm glad I broke it," M-C growls at Rapunzel.

Rapunzel glares at her for a moment before turning away.

"Come with me," M-C repeats.

Rapunzel stays still and says nothing. She decides not to engage at all with Cassandra until she apologizes.

"Come-" M-C starts to say again, walking over to Rapunzel and trying to grab her arm, which sends a bolt of fear through Rapunzel.

Rapunzel's hair immediately lights up and falls from her braid. A lock snaps over to push M-C away and her hair envelops Rapunzel in a sphere like the one she had used to protect her friends while jumping from her tower over a year ago.

Rapunzel's eyes widen. She didn't do that intentionally. But she's glad - she didn't want Cassandra touching her, not when she had just been so destructive. She didn't even want Cassandra near her right now.

"Wh-" Rapunzel hears M-C's voice from beyond her hair. "What are you doing?"

Rapunzel doesn't respond. Well, this will be an easy way to keep Cassandra from her.

She hears metallic scrapes against the outside of her shield and knows M-C is trying to rake the hair apart with her clawed gauntlets. Rapunzel holds her breath, hoping her shield holds.

And it does. She hears another frustrated-Cassandra "arrrh", louder this time. And then another. And another. She hears the claws dragging against her shield again. This goes on for a while.

"What's the point of having you here if I can't see or hear you!" M-C shouts, and Rapunzel holds her breath again. She's feeling more scared by M-C's escalating anger. She decides she's going to be there a while, and sits on the floor. Cassandra will cool off… eventually.

Rapunzel scowls in her cocoon. She remembers how Cassandra threw her book across the room that morning and demanded Rapunzel talk to her. Rapunzel supposes being nice constantly just made Cassandra feel entitled to her.

Not anymore. Rapunzel is putting her foot down. She won't leave her shield until Cassandra apologizes. And she won't be so nice from now on.

Finally she hears retreating footsteps and the sound of black spikes shooting out of stone a short distance away, and then nothing. She suspects Cassandra left through one of the large throne room windows, to leap or climb or whatever it is she does along the outside walls to move to another part of the castle because hallways and stairs are so passé, or something.

But it could be a ruse. Rapunzel stays where she is for a while longer, even as her legs start to cramp. Finally she exhales, willing her hair to drop around her. The room is empty.

"If Cassandra shows up again I'm just going back in," Rapunzel mutters to herself, and gathers her supplies. She hopes she'll at least manage to get back to her room to make dinner.

And she does. She locks her bedroom door behind her, although she knows that Cassandra could demolish the door entirely if she so pleased. Locking it makes her feel a little better regardless.

Twice that evening she sees M-C: once while she's making her dinner, M-C drops onto her balcony from above, and the next time well after sunset when M-C appears outside of a window, holding onto a spike she shot from the wall. Both times, Rapunzel immediately raises her glowing shield.

M-C doesn't try to attack it or shout at her. Rapunzel's glad: she thinks Cassandra has moved more into the "sulking" phase of her anger. Both times she leaves when Rapunzel lifts her shield.

Rapunzel's nervous to go to sleep. She leaves her hair around her in a circle, hoping that M-C's proximity - if she approaches - would cause it to glow and wake Rapunzel up.

Rapunzel thinks about the window at Underworld's wall, and after feeling so stressed and scared all day wonders if she should just leave.

But Rapunzel remembers the powers she had used in the past: sending out shockwaves, unbreakable bindings… She knows that if anyone is able to be a match for Cassandra, it'd be her.

And she decides to stay. She won't flee from her home again.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Fifth Day

Rapunzel manages to sleep unbothered through the night. She decides to stay in her room through the morning, though, since she doesn't have anywhere to be anyway and would rather not risk running into M-C. She's also not feeling terribly motivated to work on her friendship painting for Cassandra, so she mostly reads her books and rereads the couple of letters she had received from her parents and friends.

The back of her neck prickles while she's sitting up in her bookcase's reading nook, and she looks up to see M-C standing at the window to her balcony.

Rapunzel glares at her and brings up her shield immediately, glad that the glowing light would let her continue to read.

She hears M-C walk into her room and feels uneasy. Last night she hadn't entered her room, and had left immediately when Rapunzel hid herself. Is she going to destroy some of Rapunzel's things in revenge? Rapunzel holds her breath.

"I'm sorry," M-C's voice comes from beyond her shield, "I put the pieces back together. I'm sorry for breaking it."

Rapunzel's eyes widen. Cassandra... apologized? For an insane moment she thinks that Cassandra's lying, that she's not actually sorry and she's just saying it to get Rapunzel to take her shield down and then she'll attack her. But she hears M-C's footsteps after she speaks, and they become quieter as she leaves.

Rapunzel stays frozen for a while after. But when she drops her shield, she jumps down her ladder and rushes out her door.

"Put the pieces back together"? Rapunzel thinks as she runs through the halls. She remembers the pile of rubble her wall had been reduced to. There's no way. There's no way.

When she reaches the throne room, she sees her wall. The mural looks just like it had when she finished it. As she approaches, she sees thin lines of black running through the painting, like the mortar she'd seen holding together repaired parts of the castle.

Rapunzel stands staring at the work for a long time. She tries to count the individual pieces and can't. There are just too many. Some of them hardly larger than gravel.

How long did this take her? Did she work on it all night?

Just… how?

And she's not bothering Rapunzel, either. Rapunzel would have expected she'd immediately demand something from her in return, but Cassandra's nowhere to be found.

I guess I can keep working on my painting for her, Rapunzel thinks.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel doesn't see M-C again for the rest of the day. Later, Rapunzel spends time walking through some of the ruined streets of the capital outside of the castle gates. She decides if she's going to be here for six months, she should do everything she can to put the place back into repair, starting with her people's homes. She gets to work.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Sixth Day

The next morning, Rapunzel is walking through the castle when she finds the door to one of the terraces open. Looking outside, she sees the terrace has been transformed: when she passed this section on her first day it was bare, but now it's filled with elaborate crystal... flowers? The shapes emerge from branches of black rock laid in lines like an orchard. Breathless at the sight she goes over to the nearest "plant" to examine the blooms. They're like no flower she'd seen, the petals having the same kind of elaborate holes and fractals present in snowflakes. The flowers glow, and she sees through the translucent crystals a small blue light glowing at the heart of the bloom.

There are crystal flowers of different shapes, styles, and colors, and she walks down the rows, looking at the blooms on each shrub, which are slightly taller than her. The flowers are stationary, held in place by slender twigs of the unbreakable black rock and nestled among black rock leaves, all glowing with varying intensities. Delicate geometric shapes are carved into some of the flowers, so fine that Rapunzel is certain if she brought a jeweler's loupe to it she would see yet more designs within.

"Do you like it?" Rapunzel jumps at M-C's voice from behind her. She wonders how Cassandra can move so quietly through the silent world she created. Isn't her armor made of stone?

Rapunzel looks back at M-C, who is standing in the terrace doorway and immediately looks away from her. "I wanted to show you..." she adds quietly, trailing off.

Rapunzel realizes she's talking about two days ago when she destroyed Rapunzel's mural. "It's beautiful," Rapunzel answers. "You must have worked really hard on it."

"You worked really hard on it..." M-C mumbles, echoing her.

Rapunzel frowns. She had no part in the garden.

"I'm sorry," M-C tells the floor.

Rapunzel realizes that M-C had started talking about her mural. "I heard," she answers. "And I saw. Thank you, Cass, for fixing it."

M-C doesn't answer or look at her.

Rapunzel, uncertain of what to say, gestures around her. "This really is beautiful, Cass. It's amazing, I've never seen anything like it."

"It's like the one we had," M-C answers her, now looking at the flowers the farthest away from Rapunzel.

Rapunzel's eyebrows draw together. She has no idea what Cassandra's talking about. The castle gardens didn't have anything like this - not even any regular shrubs laid out in rows like this.

She opens her mouth to tell Cassandra that, but M-C cuts her off with a suddenly stronger voice saying, "Come back at night." She winces. "If you want to... come back at night. You can come back at night. Please come back at night." Saying the last one she looks at Rapunzel for a moment - but not at her face - before looking away again.

Rapunzel wants to accept, to seize this positive interaction, but she knows she can't just be nice anymore.

"Why?" she asks instead. She's sure the answer will just be about how the glowing flowers look better in the dark, but she wants to hear it from Cassandra.

"That's when it's right," M-C answers. Her feet shuffle and Rapunzel can tell she badly wants to flee, as has generally become her M.O. for interactions that pass the 45 second mark.

Rapunzel decides to drag the conversation out. Cassandra can deal with being uncomfortable - Rapunzel has been feeling uncomfortable for days. "What do you mean?"

"The lights..." M-C mumbles, looking back at the ground.

Rapunzel is baffled by this shy Cassandra. She never showed any behavior like this before the Moonstone. The other two moods Rapunzel had seen during her Underworld stay - emotionless and enraged - are understandable if undesirable. But... meekness?

Rapunzel hopes that she remains shy when they meet again that night, although she recognizes that Cassandra's moods here can flip like a switch. If this weird shy Cassandra wasn't so unsettling it'd be her favorite version of Underworld Cassandra, just by the fact she doesn't feel like she's potentially in danger in her presence.

"Okay, I can come back at night," Rapunzel finally answers her. "What time?"

But as soon as Rapunzel confirms that she'll return, M-C turns and bolts into the castle.

"Wh-what? Wait!" Rapunzel shouts and tries to follow, but when she enters the hall M-C has disappeared entirely.

"Fine! Okay!" Rapunzel shouts, exasperated. "I'll be here at 11!"

With that she returns to her room.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel spends a lot of the day thinking about the flowers. Cassandra's not an artist. Rapunzel has only seen her paint once and it was... not bad for someone who never does it, but that's the thing. Cassandra doesn't do art.

"Either she's spent the last year getting really really good at sculpture," Rapunzel notes aloud, "or this is just another unexplainable Moonstone thing." She was more inclined toward the latter.

"Maybe she actually can grow them, and there's no sculpting involved," Rapunzel considers. "That wouldn't be the oddest thing that's happened here… well, maybe it would be. But not by much."

After the sun has set and the clouds have receded, stars and the crescent moon glow in the clear sky. Rapunzel makes her way back to the terrace with a lantern - there are blue-flamed torches along the new black rock corridors to light her way, but not along the corridors of the original castle.

When she reaches the garden, M-C is waiting for her. She's standing looking out towards the flowers, so Rapunzel approaches from behind. She seems unbothered by Rapunzel's footsteps and Rapunzel stops to stand next to her, looking out at the garden. As Rapunzel suspected, it's beautiful: not only are there different colors and intensities of light from each flower, but the different shapes of the blooms each cast their light in varied ways.

"Wow, it's breathtaking," Rapunzel begins, about to ask M-C how she made them, but she's interrupted.

"This isn't the right way," M-C says, her hair and eyes softly glowing in the night, staring towards the garden. "We have to look at it from above." She raises a hand, and Rapunzel almost falls over as the ground beneath them rises, a pillar of black rock bringing them up over two stories from the terrace.

When Rapunzel catches her balance, she's about to berate M-C for moving them so suddenly, but M-C's pointing towards the garden and Rapunzel's glance downwards removes any thoughts she just was having.

The garden is the night sky. The majority of the terrace looks like a view through her telescope: solitary lights twinkling from among the shrubs' black rock leaves, which reflect nothing so the canopy looks like the void of space. Hundreds of stars glint up at her in different sizes, strengths, and colors. Light from larger blooms catch a myriad of smaller crystals among the leaves that Rapunzel hadn't seen, forming the appearance of colorful cloud-like nebulae. Clusters of lights in varying size and brightness are arranged to give the appearance of three dimensional spiral galaxies. Around the edges of the garden the rest of the terrace - the stone railing around the edges, the tiles that make up the ground - is illuminated just barely by the moon and starlight from above so that the garden itself looks like a portal had opened on the ground directly to the depths of the cosmos.

Rapunzel stands there, dumbfounded. She looks up at the sky, but knows that even the stars above couldn't hold a candle to this - it's too complex, too filled with astral details not visible to the naked eye. She looks back down at the garden.

"It's like the one we had," M-C says next to her. She tilts her head to the side. "Well, you were better at it than me. This is a poor imitation."

"Cass, I- I've never seen anything like this before in my life," Rapunzel answers, her mind still trying to catch up to what she was seeing. "Maybe through a telescope, but nothing like this on earth. It's…" Rapunzel's at a loss for words. "Beautiful," she says, but beautiful doesn't begin to cover it. She's searching her mind for a better word when M-C interrupts her thoughts again.

"So was your mural," she says, her eyebrows drawing together while she looks down at the garden.

"Cass," Rapunzel begins, unimpressed by her attempt. "You don't have to lie to me. My silly paintings are not comparable to this, and I know you didn't like it anyway."

"I only didn't like part of it," M-C answers quietly. "The rest was very pretty. I just felt very mad by the part I didn't like."

Rapunzel frowns, and finally looks up from the garden to M-C next to her. "What part?"

M-C doesn't return her gaze. "The sun," she answers.

"Oh," Rapunzel says after a moment. She thinks of her painting, and remembers the small sun she put in the sky. Was that tiny ball of yellow really enough to send Cassandra into a rage? She's in Corona's castle, surely she sees sun shapes around her all the time--

Rapunzel abruptly realizes that she's not seen a single tapestry of Corona's crest in the ruined castle.

"Well, if I promise not to paint the sun anywhere, would you promise me you won't break any more of my things?" Rapunzel asks her. Internally, she feels extremely grateful that she seems to still have shy Cassandra as company. Perhaps she could reason with her.

M-C continues to stare down at the garden. "Yeah," she answers.

"Cass, I want you to look at me." Rapunel tells her sternly. "And I want you to promise to me."

M-C finally looks over at her. "I promise," she says, her glowing blue eyes staring into Rapunzel's and her eyebrows drawing together again with discomfort. "I won't break any more of your things."

Rapunzel smiles at her. "Good!" She says brightly, and M-C's face immediately turns back away from her to look below again. "And I promise I won't paint any more suns."

M-C doesn't answer her and she shuffles her feet. Rapunzel recognizes this tell - she wants to leave again.

"Why do you keep running away from me?" Rapunzel asks her.

M-C's frown deepens, and the sound of shifting rocks behind them makes Rapunzel turn. She sees that without even looking, M-C just formed stairs from black rock that lead to the closest window to offer them a path back into the castle.

M-C tries to turn, but Rapunzel moves into her way. "Cass," she says sternly. "Please answer my question." She prepares herself for Cassandra to leap over her, or just jump off the pillar entirely and vanish without another word.

M-C looks into Rapunzel's face with that same uncomfortable expression she gave before.

"I-" M-C begins, and Rapunzel's eyebrows raise in surprise. She's answering her?

"I don't like you to see me like this," M-C answers, her expression becoming more distressed.

Rapunzel's face softens with disbelief and surprise. She was not expecting any response at all, much less one so… vulnerable.

M-C immediately looks away from her, and rather than taking the steps she formed, opts to leap off of the pillar towards another window. Rapunzel lets her go, at a loss for words yet again.

Rapunzel needs to think about this. She needs to revisit her notes from the first day.

But first, she decides to sit at the edge of the pillar and stare downwards at the cosmic garden for a while.

Chapter Text

Seventh Day

The next morning, Rapunzel adds new bullet points to her notes. Her first week in Underworld had been… eventful.

• Cassandra opened a window in Underworld's wall. She says I can leave if I want. She said she did this so that I wouldn't be sad.

Rapunzel stares at this point. She's still not sure if it's a trick. But if it's not, it means that Cassandra still cares about her, despite her flares of anger and the terrible things she said on the first day. Rapunzel's heart clings to this thought like a liferaft in the ocean.

• Besides the reasons Cassandra already talked about for why she's mad at me (being a bad friend/condescending) and in general (no one appreciating her/giving her a chance), there are other things that set off her anger: thinking of her as a servant (which I didn't, but she yelled at me about it anyway), Gothel, and images of the sun.

Rapunzel thinks of how angry Cassandra was in the Dark Kingdom - some of the things she said might have been linked to her anger about being a servant. Rapunzel frowns. She never thought of Cassandra as a servant. Cassandra was her best friend. Sure, Cassandra helped her with things, but it wasn't any work that Rapunzel wouldn't have done in return for Cassandra, she was just always too busy with princess lessons and duties to help her in return. Cassandra understood that. Right? Like Cassandra said shortly after they met, Rapunzel had her job, and Cassandra had hers…

Which was servant work. Rapunzel taps her quill against the ground. But Cassandra never said she didn't like it! Of course Rapunzel would have encouraged her to do other work if she didn't like it…

Which means she wouldn't have been able to spend so much time with Rapunzel. She remembers what Cassandra said to her shortly after they returned from the night Rapunzel's hair grew back. "My dad will have me taken off of princess detail. We'll never see each other again."

"So she stayed doing work she didn't like…" Rapunzel says softly. "Because she wanted to be close to me."

Rapunzel remembers how Cassandra gave up her opportunity of being a warrior in Ingvarr to stay in Corona with Rapunzel. Because she valued her life there - her new friendship - more than the comparably much easier path to her dream of being a warrior. Cassandra knew that overcoming Corona's rules about the guard would be so much more difficult than seizing that opportunity presented to her. But she stayed… for Rapunzel.

And then for a year she stayed in a position she didn't like… for Rapunzel.

Something seizes in Rapunzel's chest, and she feels tears prick at her eyes. How long was Cassandra miserable for her sake?

Rapunzel takes a deep breath to steady herself, and she considers this further: if it's true that Cassandra sacrificed pursuing her goals to be with Rapunzel, then of course anything that makes her think Rapunzel is a bad and not-worthwhile friend would anger her deeply. She would feel like she wasted opportunities and two years of her life on nothing.

If Cassandra thought Rapunzel just saw her as a servant… Rapunzel suppresses a wave of distress. She needs to communicate to Cassandra how much Cassandra means to her.

Rapunzel takes another deep breath. Today she'll finish her painting, and she'll finally be able to make a proper and meaningful apology. Holding onto that small comfort, Rapunzel continues with her notes.

Gothel. Well, this one is obvious. Gothel was a terrible person who abandoned her. And it must be upsetting to Cassandra to know she's descended from… that. Rapunzel's eyebrows draw together in thought. Cassandra wanted to learn more about Gothel - why? She knows pretty much everything already from the weeks after Rapunzel first arrived in the castle. Maybe she was hoping there was something else? Something, anything good about her?

That might explain why she was mad at Rapunzel for not telling her more about her. Admittedly Gothel was her mother, so Cassandra deserves to know everything she can about her… right? Cassandra certainly seems to think so. But Rapunzel can't even think of anything about Gothel she'd not already mentioned to Cassandra, and she'd really rather not think in depth of her time in the tower to try to come up with any other terrible things she'd missed. She can't imagine that conversation would be good for either of them. At least Cassandra's not brought it up again… for now.

Rapunzel sits back, stressed. She has to decide whether or not to give in if Cassandra pushes it again. Maybe she'll try to explain again that Cassandra has already heard everything, that Gothel was very bad, and that she thinks it would just be upsetting for both of them to talk about her further. And then if she keeps pushing it… Rapunzel sighs and rubs her temples. She remembers what Cassandra had said about her being selfish. Was this reluctance selfishness? But what's the line between selfishness and putting her foot down?

Rapunzel drags her hands down her face. If it would give Cassandra some kind of closure or comfort… she thinks to herself, I'll talk about Gothel with her.

Rapunzel shakes her head to clear the miasma of that thought, and she moves on.

Images of the sun upset her. Something about Rapunzel's father and the kingdom made Cassandra angry enough to attack him and destroy Corona, so it makes sense she doesn't like Corona's crest - an image of the sun.

Rapunzel frowns and revisits this enigma. What about Corona or Rapunzel's father could make Cassandra so angry? Rapunzel concedes that Cassandra doesn't have particularly strong feelings of patriotism for Corona considering how she almost left for Ingvarr, but Rapunzel didn't think Cassandra had any particular animosity towards Corona either.

Then again, Rapunzel also only just realized that Cassandra didn't like being a servant…

Rapunzel tries to think of things that would upset her, and she almost immediately realizes something obvious that she'd been overlooking: Cassandra's dream of being a guard kept being denied to her in Corona. Rapunzel never thought too much about this, since she was always sure the captain would come around, but it occurs to Rapunzel now that Cassandra had been dealing with this for years. That's definitely a reason she might become angry with the kingdom.

Rapunzel's eyebrows draw together in distress. But is that bad enough to destroy everything? Surely not. There's some piece she's still missing.

Rapunzel considers that when Cassandra was made angry by the sun image in her mural, it wasn't a Coronan crest, it was just a ball of yellow. She supposes that Cassandra must be... darkness-oriented now because of the Moonstone, which is likely why the kingdom is shrouded by dark clouds during the day. Perhaps distaste for the actual sun is why Cassandra doesn't like images of it.

Rapunzel frowns. What if… No way. Surely that's too insane even for this new Cassandra.

But Rapunzel wonders if Cassandra's attack on Corona was a larger scale version of what she did to Rapunzel's mural. Cassandra said she liked the rest of the mural, the sun just made her mad enough to destroy all of it. What if all of the sun images in the kingdom - and the sun overhead - just made Cassandra so mad that she demolished everything in Corona? So it's not that she hated the kingdom, but rather that she was just driven to such fury?

But why? Why would the sun - or images of it - drive her to such anger? It had to be connected to the Moonstone.

Rapunzel recognizes this theory is only slightly more developed than "the Moonstone made her do it."

She sighs at this dead end, and decides to move on with her notes.

• Cassandra seems to have three distinct manners: enraged, emotionless, and shy. I've seen her flip between these with little warning, and I haven't seen her display other moods.

Enraged Cassandra makes sense: Cassandra has always had a temper. And Rapunzel just thought in detail of the things that make her angry. But the other ones...

Rapunzel considers how Cassandra is very mellow compared to Rapunzel, so the emotionless version of her… almost makes sense. Cassandra's mellow and difficult to make laugh, but she has no issue communicating when things annoy her and usually has a no-nonsense, get-things-done demeanor about her rather than being completely blank. More of a, "always vaguely exasperated" Cassandra than emotionless.

Rapunzel taps her quill against the ground again. When she first met Cassandra she was delighted by how "real" Cassandra was with everything, unafraid to voice her true opinions. It made her abrasive but also made Rapunzel gravitate towards her, since Rapunzel had spent her life with a sickly-sweet serial liar.

Of course, Rapunzel understands now that Cassandra isn't "real" about everything. Minor things, sure... but things that really bother her, that would involve any kind of emotional vulnerability to talk about, Cassandra refuses to admit. Possibly even acknowledge herself.

So this emotionless version might be an amped-up version of that. Cassandra refusing to admit anything is bothering her. Except obviously things are bothering her because she destroyed a kingdom. And she can't even keep the denial up for long - her emotionless front keeps exploding with anger.

Rapunzel decides that if the emotionless version is Cassandra in denial, then she's just as unstable as an enraged Cassandra.

"Great," Rapunzel mutters to herself. "Now I've got two out of three to be intimidated around instead of just one."

But then again, emotionless Cassandra also is the one who gave Rapunzel the window to escape Underworld if she wants. So maybe there's more depth to her than Rapunzel's aware of.

...Unless it's a trap.

Rapunzel shakes her head again and begins to think of the most confusing version of her Underworld company: shy Cassandra.

Shy Cassandra who is also, apparently, an artist. Rapunzel sits in front of her papers pondering this for a long time.

"Okay, I've got nothing," she admits to the room. "This is just weird. I'm blaming the Moonstone again."

Rapunzel stares at the page for a moment before flipping it to continue her notes.

• Cassandra destroyed my work when she was made angry by the sun image. She refused to apologize initially, but when I refused to interact with her, she put it back together and apologized.

Rapunzel again decides that her "being as nice as possible" plan didn't work and standing up for herself will get her more progress than otherwise. Rapunzel supposes this makes sense. Cassandra has criticized her many times before for always being too nice and too much of a doormat. She'd want to see Rapunzel having a spine.

"Geez, this is confusing," Rapunzel laments. She never thought that having friends would be this complicated. As soon as she thinks she's figured some social thing out, she realizes that the opposite is true for another person.

Everyone loves it when Rapunzel's nice, but Cassandra says she should be less nice. Other people don't like making fun of people or when you make fun of them, but Cassandra thinks it's an enjoyable game. Other people love festivals and celebrations, but Cassandra says "we don't have to celebrate things every six seconds."

"Maybe with Cassandra I should just always do the opposite of what I think I should do," Rapunzel comments. But didn't Cassandra like Rapunzel the way she is? Isn't that why she wanted to be friends and be around her for so long?

But then again, she's really mad at Rapunzel and maybe doesn't like her right now... except for when she's not mad and does like her.

Rapunzel puts a hand to her head as she remembers her previous note of "trying to figure Cassandra out will drive me insane."

Be more assertive. That's all she'll take away from this one.

• Cassandra said "what's the point of having you here if I can't see or hear you." I've seen her watching me when I was playing music in the garden, and in the sitting room she demanded that I talk even though she had no interest in having a conversation.

Rapunzel frowns. Is that why Cassandra wants Rapunzel here? For… company? Rapunzel taps her quill in thought. She doesn't think Cassandra even knows what she wants - she admitted that on the first day. But this might be part of it. But on the flip side…

• Cassandra said that she keeps leaving after only a little bit of interacting because she doesn't like me to see her "like this."

Well, this is certainly another case of Cassandra's bizarre vacillating desires. She wants one thing, then the next minute wants something in direct opposition. Rapunzel sighs. Her inconsistent behavior probably falls under "problems the Moonstone caused", which won't be resolved until Rapunzel has gotten the Moonstone from her.

But why would Cassandra be embarrassed of Rapunzel seeing her "like this"? Rapunzel would expect that Cassandra would love for Rapunzel to see her like this. She's the strongest she's ever been. She has supernatural powers and superhuman strength. She could defeat any foe in battle. She could defeat any army in battle, probably.

And what she said was so uncharacteristically honest and vulnerable. Cassandra doesn't do that. Even with weird shy Cassandra she never expected something like it. And presumably this "I don't like you to see me like this" is still applicable to her other moods, since she disappears just as fast in those cases.

Rapunzel frowns. She revisits her attempts to understand shy Cassandra. Shy Cassandra was also upset with Rapunzel for not getting letters from her.

"Is shy Cassandra just… emotionally vulnerable Cassandra?" Rapunzel asks herself. "Well that would explain why I've never seen this side of her before."

And would explain why she seems so uncomfortable all the time: Cassandra hates being vulnerable. But then… why even show this part to Rapunzel? She must have lost any ability to control her moods.

Rapunzel squints. "Moonstone," she says angrily.

Again, she has no better explanation than "the Moonstone messed with her."

• Cassandra made… a garden. I don't even know how to describe it. I have no idea how she did it. If she carved everything herself, it must have been a huge undertaking. I think she made it for me? So she put in all of that work for me, to make something beautiful to show me. She said it's like one that we had, but I have no idea what she means. I've never seen anything like it.

Rapunzel stares at this point. If it's true that Cassandra went through such an endeavor to make something so beautiful for her, certainly that means she still cares about Rapunzel.

But Rapunzel frowns thinking of the sequence of events. When Cassandra first wanted to show her the garden, it was immediately after flying into a rage and destroying something Rapunzel worked hard on. How can she reconcile in her mind doing something so terrible to Rapunzel, and then demanding she come look at a gift? She was insistent too, saying Rapunzel had to come with her. And when Rapunzel refused, she grew angry again. Did she intend to use the garden as an apology? But then she apologized later with just her voice, and didn't try to bring Rapunzel to the garden. And she said she was looking for Rapunzel before destroying her mural, so she wanted to show it to her already.

Rapunzel feels like she's hit a mental dead end. There have been a lot of these with Cassandra's unpredictable and seemingly illogical behavior.

Rapunzel sighs. She's been writing Cassandra's behavior off many times with "Moonstone", but she had trouble understanding Cassandra before the Moonstone too. Maybe these things did make sense with some thought process entirely alien to Rapunzel.

When Cassandra kept refusing Rapunzel's help when her leg was broken, Rapunzel couldn't understand it. Why would Cassandra refuse her help when she could make things so much easier for her? Rapunzel just had to accept Cassandra's wishes despite how illogical it seemed.

When Cassandra became so rough in Vardaros with the other abrasive citizens, Rapunzel couldn't understand it. Why would Cassandra and the Vardarans be so mean to each other? Rapunzel just had to accept their behaviors and relationships were somehow understood as friendly and fun, despite how unfriendly and mean it seemed.

So Rapunzel decides that she'll just have to try to accept Cassandra's bizarre behaviors. The ones that don't disrespect Rapunzel, of course.

She edits her "Moonstone behavior" note with "Moonstone* behavior (*or Cass)"

Rapunzel supposes Cassandra has just as hard of a time figuring out Rapunzel. Like how Cassandra had thought of Rapunzel as condescending... Rapunzel never thought she came off that way!

"Really unfortunate neither of us have done this friendship thing before," Rapunzel mutters.

Then there's what Cassandra had said about the garden. "It's like the one we had." That was just outright untrue. Was she getting confused between real life and dreams she had sleeping? Cassandra never had problems with that before. But Rapunzel couldn't think of any other explanation.

Rapunzel pauses, considering this. She remembers how Cassandra had been saying things that didn't make sense when she attacked Rapunzel's father. Was this also tied up in being confused between the real world and a dream world? That might explain why she's so angry with Corona and Rapunzel's father - some nightmare she thinks was real. But Rapunzel recognizes this is quite the logical leap to make. She needs more information before drawing real conclusions.

Rapunzel reads through all of the notes she made. "Well, there are some things that are so different that I'm still going to blame the Moonstone," she says. "Cassandra doesn't know why she destroyed Corona, or why she wanted me here. Her rages are way more intense and she has set-offs she didn't have before. She remembers things that never happened, and she seems unable to control her moods at all. Those things aren't different thought processes from me - they're dramatic changes from how she was before."

Retrieving the Moonstone remains a high priority. For Corona, the world... and Cassandra.

Rapunzel needs a plan. Maybe she should just ask Cassandra all the questions she has every time they encounter each other. Eventually she might get some answers. Or Cassandra would just start avoiding her entirely… but if she wants company, she wouldn't be able to keep that up for long. Or maybe Rapunzel should hide in her hair every time Cassandra approaches her until Cassandra starts giving her answers, the same way she got Cassandra to apologize.

Rapunzel frowns. That might get her answers, but it'd probably damage her relationship further with Cassandra, who is sick of their friendship being on Rapunzel's terms. She taps her quill against the ground in thought.

"Okay, first I'll apologize to her," Rapunzel thinks aloud. "I'll give her the painting and tell her how much she means to me and try to explain what I think was miscommunication between us. I won't ask her to talk about her feelings back to me. I'll keep working on fixing up the capital and let Cassandra sit on that for a while. Eventually on her own terms and in her own time she'll come back to talk to me and we'll be friends again. THEN I can start asking her questions. And then I'll get the Moonstone from her. She'll go fully back to normal and Corona will come back and I can unite the Sundrop and Moonstone and fulfill my destiny and everyone will be happy."

It sounds very good and convincing when Rapunzel says it out like that. Almost enough for her to believe it.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel looks at her painting on its large canvas. The picture shows the two of them in flight over the incredible cliffs, waterfalls, forests, and ravines they had explored together. The sky is just barely changing with sunset, adding pinks and purples to the shadows of the clouds - with no sun in sight, of course. Their wings barely touch, a reminder of Rapunzel teaching Cassandra how to fly. It's beautiful. It's perfect. Rapunzel spent so many more hours on it than she'd usually spend on a painting, to make sure every part of it was just right.

Rapunzel can't wait to give it to her. She starts coming up with exactly what she'll say, and writes it in her journal to read it over and over again to herself.

Cass, I wanted to apologize to you. You're right that I've been a bad friend. I've taken you for granted and not expressed nearly enough gratitude for everything you've done for me. I've demanded you adjust to my comfort and I haven't accommodated your needs. I'm so sorry for all of it. I know I haven't shown it, but you mean the world to me. You're my best friend. I want to be better for you. I want to make things right between us, but only if and when you want to as well. I'll be patient. I promise.

Rapunzel flips the canvas over to write the painting's title on the back. "Free Together."

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel decides to walk around the castle with the painting under her arm, hoping to run into Cassandra. It's a long shot, but Rapunzel's buzzing with excitement and can't focus on anything else.

In the front entry hall, she finds M-C.

"Cass!" Rapunzel yells, delighted, hoping that Cassandra won't bolt upon seeing her. M-C turns, and Rapunzel can see some uncertainty on her face. Shy Cass, Rapunzel hopes silently as she runs over.

Rapunzel slows to a stop in front of her. "Cass, I want to give you something," Rapunzel begins. "And I want it to be a symbol to you of everything I'm about to say."

She pulls out the painting from under her arm, and turns it around to show her. "I painted this for you." Rapunzel takes a deep breath. "I wanted to apologize to you. You're right that I've been a bad friend. I've-"

M-C reaches over to the painting and takes it in her hands, staring intently at it. Rapunzel lets her take it, excited to see her reaction. She's about to continue her speech when M-C throws the painting across the room, and it hits the ground with a crack of the wood frame breaking.

"I- what??" Rapunzel yells, aghast. "Why would you do-"

But M-C's already turned away. "I don't want your garbage," she responds as she begins to leave.

"Don't you dare," Rapunzel says intensely with tears pricking her eyes, and she lunges to grab M-C's arm. "That was a present for you!" Rapunzel's voice catches. "Why would you break it? You promised me you wouldn't break things!" M-C's armor is unnaturally cold in her hand.

"I said I wouldn't break your things," M-C responds just as coldly. "You said yourself, you gave it to me. And I did what I wanted with it." She shakes Rapunzel's grip off, and continues walking.

Rapunzel feels herself filling with rage. "Don't you DARE," she shouts, and the wall of black rock around the doorway M-C was walking towards explodes.

M-C staggers back from the collapsing wall. She looks back at Rapunzel with shock across her face. Rapunzel thinks for a moment she sees fear.

Rapunzel wipes tears from her face. "Why did you break it?" She asks again, trying to supress sobs.

The shock on M-C's face gives way to anger. "It's garbage!" She yells. "It doesn't mean anything! It's worse than nothing!"

At her words, Rapunzel's aim of suppressing her sobs fails. She covers her face with her hands. She spent so long on it. She put so much into it. The moment had meant so much to her. It was supposed to remind Cassandra of their bond the way it did for Rapunzel. She doesn't care. She doesn't care about any of it. She doesn't care about Rapunzel.

Rapunzel feels like her heart had just been torn from her body. This is worse than when Cassandra first betrayed her. She crumples to her knees.

She's so distraught she doesn't see her hair begin to glow, or hear the humming that fills the air.

M-C notices. "Rapunzel," she starts, uncertainly.

At her voice, Rapunzel feels something snap inside of her.

M-C throws a shield of black rock up in front of her just before the blast. Her shield crumbles immediately under its strength, as do all of the black rock structures augmenting the room. Even the non-black-rock walls and ceiling are cracked and parts are blasted away by the shockwave. One wall nearby, just barely left standing, begins to topple towards Rapunzel.

M-C dives over and shoots another shield of black rock up from the very cracked floor to prevent the debris from crushing them.

Most of the ceiling is gone. The doors of the entryway are gone. Many sections of the walls have collapsed to varying degrees.

Rapunzel loses consciousness.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

When she wakes up, she's not sure how much time has passed. She's still on the dusty cracked floor of what used to be the front entry hall. Light filters down from beyond the dark clouds overhead. She pushes herself up and sees M-C sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of her.

"You exploded," M-C tells her plainly. "Here," she adds, holding out a handkerchief.

Rapunzel feels overcome with anger. "Go away!" She shouts, slapping M-C's hand away.

M-C looks at her with a blank expression. "You're upset," she observes.

Rapunzel's wiping at her face with the back of her hand and she snatches the handkerchief off of the ground. "Of course I'm upset!" She yells back. "You're terrible! How could you say those things!" Rapunzel feels tears start building again in her eyes.

"What things?" M-C asks, tilting her head.

Rapunzel is so taken aback her rage is halted in its tracks, and for a moment she stares at her speechless. "You called my gift garbage and worse than nothing!"

"Oh," M-C responds with a frown. "It is." She speaks as though she's saying the obvious.

Rapunzel's so shocked by how casually cruel M-C's being that she doesn't even know what to feel. She becomes convinced she's in a nightmare.

"Why do you think that?" Rapunzel barely gets out.

M-C scowls, but doesn't move to get up. "You make things for everyone. It doesn't mean anything. You act like it's some grand gesture but you're making things and giving them away all the time. You do it for everyone so it's meaningless. It just shows you don't care."

If Rapunzel wasn't already shocked beyond reason, this would have put her there. "How," she begins hoarsely, "can you receive a gift I worked for hours on and conclude it means I don't care?" Rapunzel's voice begins to raise again. "What world are you living in, Cassandra!?"

"This one!" M-C shouts in return as she gestures around her. "It means I'm not special to you! It's garbage!" Her voice drops darkly. "And now you're condescending to me again."

"What," Rapunzel whispers, "is wrong with you?" She has to be in a nightmare.

"There is nothing wrong with me," M-C snarls intensely. Her jaw clenches and the ground under them begins to shake as she leaps to her feet. "There is nothing wrong with me!"

Rapunzel looks at the barely-standing walls left remaining as the earth begins to tremor. She considers trying to placate Cassandra, but decides that she'd upset Rapunzel so much, Cassandra can deal with being upset herself.

But the earth stops shaking, and M-C's expression shifts. She looks upset, and Rapunzel thinks she sees M-C's eyes start to shine with tears. But it's gone in a second, as she bares her teeth at Rapunzel and takes off. She leaps over a mostly-fallen wall and disappears through another hole into the castle.

Rapunzel scowls. Good, she thinks. She deserves to be upset. But her spitefulness evaporates quickly, and she's left only with that hollow pain in her chest. She sees a pile of other handkerchiefs folded next to her. Cassandra must have collected them to put next to her while she was unconscious.

Rapunzel puts a hand to her head. So Cassandra will throw away her hard work and call it garbage, but then collect handkerchiefs for her because she was crying. Crying because of what Cassandra said! Does she care or not?

Rapunzel drags herself to her feet. She feels exhausted through her entire body, the same way she had felt the first time she sent out a shockwave. She picks up the handkerchief pile and hesitates before walking over towards where M-C had thrown the painting.

It must have been destroyed in the blast, she thinks to herself, and she has to swallow back tears again. She doesn't even know why she's upset. It was for Cassandra and she hated it. It was useless. Garbage. It doesn't matter if it's gone.

But when she reaches where it had landed she finds it still laying on the floor, covered in tiny pieces of shattered black rock. The pieces are scattered in the direction of the blast, originating from a base of black rock that formed a line curved around the painting.

Chapter Text

Eighth Day

Rapunzel sleeps for almost fifteen hours. It's a deep and thankfully dreamless sleep. She wakes around 5am, but doesn't get out of her bed.

"What am I going to do," she mumbles into her pillow. Her plan from yesterday morning was shot. She and Cassandra are furious at each other. Rapunzel has no idea how to speak to her without making things worse. She can't even use wordless gestures without making things worse.

She so badly wants to give up. Abruptly she remembers when they first arrived in Vardaros, when Eugene became engaged to that girl Stalyan out of the blue. Rapunzel was heartbroken that her best friend suddenly wanted nothing to do with her and was going to abandon her. Cassandra was the one who told Rapunzel that they had to fight back against what was happening, and that the Rapunzel she knew would never give up.

Rapunzel feels tears in her eyes again. Is she that same Rapunzel? Cassandra certainly isn't that same Cassandra. Rapunzel thinks about the window in the Underworld wall. Maybe it is time to give up.

But she feels so depressed she can't even imagine getting up and making the long trek there. She stays in her bed, watching the sky lighten and change colors with the sunrise, and seeing the dark clouds begin to materialize to block it out.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

She gets up once she can't ignore her hunger any longer. But after she eats and drinks, she returns to her bed. She doesn't even bring a book. Her mind is full of static.

She repeats this process for her lunch. And dinner.

Despite barely moving all day, she has no trouble falling asleep that night.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Ninth Day

The next morning, Rapunzel wakes to see M-C leaning against the vanity near her bed. In the semi-darkness her softly glowing blue eyes stare into Rapunzel's.

"You haven't left," M-C observes.

Rapunzel scowls at her. How long had she been standing there? Rapunzel would be feeling some mix of anger, upset, and a sense of her privacy being invaded, if she didn't feel so empty. She doesn't respond.

"Why?" M-C asks.

Rapunzel draws her covers closer to her.

"You're not talking to me again," M-C notes.

Rapunzel considers just going back to sleep, but the jolt she felt upon seeing M-C has made her fully awake. She opts for staring out the window instead. Behind the clouds, it's slowly growing brighter.

"You're upset with me."

Rapunzel feels a brief spark of anger in her chest at this. Of course she's upset.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees M-C frowning at her. "You're the one who broke the room, not me."

Rapunzel's head snaps over to M-C. Does she think Rapunzel's upset because of the hall?

"I'm not going to fix the things you broke, because it's not my fault." M-C continues.

M-C's continued inability to display rational thought processes reignites emotion in Rapunzel.

"You think I'm upset because of the front hall?" Rapunzel finally answers her.

M-C stares expressionlessly at her. "That's what you were upset about last time. When the mural was broken." She abruptly looks away from Rapunzel. "When I broke the mural. But you broke things this time."

Rapunzel has no idea how to answer her. If she tries to explain rational thought processes to Cassandra, it's entirely possible Cassandra will accuse her of condescending to her again. But then again, who cares?

"I was upset before when you broke something I worked hard on," Rapunzel explains to her. "I am upset now because you threw away something I worked hard on. I'm more upset this time because I made it for you, and you called it garbage. When all I wanted to do was apologize to you and show you how much you mean to me." Rapunzel's voice hardens. "Because despite everything, you still mean a lot to me."

M-C doesn't answer for a moment, and Rapunzel braces herself for an outburst of anger for daring to explain something to her. Finally M-C looks back at Rapunzel and asks, "Is that why you haven't left?"

Rapunzel is caught off guard by this response. It seems every time she expects one reaction, she gets something completely different.

Rapunzel's not sure why she hasn't left. She had regained the physical strength necessary to get to the wall by yesterday afternoon. But she stayed. Yesterday it was likely more due to feeling depressed than determined. She revisits her feelings now. Would she leave today?

With emotion burning in her again, she decides she would not. Spending her entire life in two rooms has made her very stubborn.

"Yes," she answers. It's somewhat true. 'Mean a lot' presently being defined as 'you infuriate me and I will not let you win' more than 'you're my best friend', but she doesn't need to know that.

M-C looks away from her again. "Why?" She asks the wall.

Why? Why what? Is she asking why... she means a lot to Rapunzel?

Where would Rapunzel even begin? She considers going with the, 'you infuriate me and I will not let you win' answer, but decides to go with the way she would have answered two days ago.

This is also the perfect opportunity to teach her a lesson. Rapunzel pulls herself up and gets out of her bed. M-C doesn't move as she walks past, and from beside her bookcase she pulls out the gift painting.

She carries it over to M-C and props it up near her on the edge of the bed, using her hand to hold together the split in the wood frame.

"This is a painting of us as birds," Rapunzel begins her art lecture. "This day was the happiest I had in a long time, and it was because of you. I got to spend the whole day exploring with you and talking to you, and then we had the impossible opportunity together to fly. It was scary at the end, but you saved us by leading the hawk away, and then I used the last egg on you. It means everything we have together to me. Adventure with you, the fun we had together, the way we protected each other." She takes a deep breath. "This shows why you mean a lot to me. And I spent so many hours working on it and thinking about us and I was going to apologize to you with it but you threw it away." Rapunzel's voice catches. She's surprised she even has tears left in her. "It means the world to me because you mean the world to me and you threw it away. So that's why I'm upset."

Rapunzel wipes tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. M-C stares intently at the painting in silence.

"That's us?" She finally asks.

Rapunzel looks between M-C and her painting. Surely Cassandra could tell it's them, even in the dim lighting. It's not like their bird forms were particularly natural looking. And the view beyond them is unmistakable. She couldn't have forgotten. Could she?

"Yes," Rapunzel answers, confused.

M-C pushes herself from the vanity she was leaning on and looks in the mirror behind her. She turns back to Rapunzel to stare at the painting. "It doesn't look like us," she says.

Rapunzel frowns. Of course it doesn't look like how they look right now - Cassandra would know that, it's them as birds! Why would she make a show of looking in the mirror and saying that? Unless…

Cassandra is mocking her.

Rapunzel cannot believe she laid her heart bare again for Cassandra to stomp on it.

"You… jerk!" Rapunzel cries. She grabs the painting off of the bed. She wants to throw it across the room herself. Tears start gathering in her eyes again and she's about to yell at M-C to get out, when M-C puts her hands out in front of her.

"Wait," she says. "Wait. I don't- I meant to say, I didn't recognize us, in the painting. I- I'm sorry for that. Your art is very pretty." Her voice is earnest, and she looks distressed.

Rapunzel feels that terrible pressure in her chest and head that precedes fully sobbing, and she tries to choke it down. What is Cassandra saying? Could it be true that she just didn't recognize the scene? That she wasn't making a joke of Rapunzel's feelings? But how could she not recognize it?

"It's," M-C starts awkwardly, like she wants to avoid silence for once. "That sounds- I mean, what you described- I'm sorry," she says as she looks down. "I didn't know. But it sounds like it was really important."

Rapunzel's eyes widen. "You don't remember?" she asks. Even if the day wasn't important to Cassandra like it was to Rapunzel, surely she'd at least remember getting turned into a bird.

M-C still looks at the floor. Her expression is sad, and she doesn't answer.

Rapunzel doesn't know what to say. Cassandra lost her memories? But she recognizes Rapunzel - right?

"What do you remember?" Rapunzel asks. She needs to know how much Cassandra knows. If she can't remember anything, then is this a stranger standing in front of her?

M-C hesitates. She starts, "It's-" but breaks off and shifts uncomfortably, still refusing to look at Rapunzel. She opens her mouth like she's about to speak, but she winces and closes it again.

"Cass, please, tell me," Rapunzel says with fear growing in her. Cassandra can't be a stranger to her, she's too important. She has to remember their friendship.

M-C takes a deep breath and gestures vaguely in front of her, distressed. "It's- it's all," she begins again. "In pieces. And I keep losing them, or only having parts, or they don't fit together, or they're too sharp- It's all there, somewhere, it's just-" She finally looks at Rapunzel. "I'm sorry. I- I didn't understand what the painting meant. I didn't know how important it was. I'm sorry for throwing it away. I'm sorry for calling it garbage."

Rapunzel's staring at M-C in shock. Cassandra has amnesia. At least, some level of it. She says it's all there, but she's having trouble keeping it together? Was this related to her mood changes? It must be. Something happened to her.

"What do you remember, Cass?" Rapunzel presses her again. She has to know.

M-C starts shifting her feet and claws at her arm. "I- I can't," she begins, agitated and looking away from Rapunzel again. "If I try too hard it gets- don't ask me," she says. "It will break again, it always breaks."

"What breaks? What are you talking about?" Rapunzel steps towards her with escalating concern, reaching out a hand.

M-C flinches away and knocks into the vanity. "No-no- don't ask me," M-C repeats, her voice quiet and scared. Her breathing becomes harsh.

Rapunzel stops moving. What is happening to her? "Cass, please, talk to me. I want to help you."

M-C puts a hand to her face. "It's-"

She stops and turns sharply towards Rapunzel's balcony. Catching her reflection in the vanity mirror as she turns, she throws her hand out to smash it. Rapunzel jumps at the shattering sound and M-C leaps towards the window. Rapunzel runs to follow her as she slips out, but by the time she's gotten there M-C is long gone.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel hears crashes in the distance shortly after M-C leaves. She's destroying parts of the castle, Rapunzel realizes. Rapunzel runs out of her room and tries to reach the origin of the sounds, but can't pinpoint where it came from. She shouts for Cassandra, but receives no response.

Cassandra has some kind of amnesia, she thinks as she walks through the halls. Not only is she unable to control her moods, she can't control her memories. But what does that mean?

Unable to figure it out, Rapunzel frowns and she tries to categorize the Cassandra she had encountered.

She started as emotionless Cass, who had no concept of rational reasons why Rapunzel would be upset. Could she really not tell that the painting was meaningful to Rapunzel? Even if she didn't recognize the scene, didn't she notice that Rapunzel was upset before the room was destroyed?

And she said she thought the gift didn't mean anything because Rapunzel would make gifts for other people too... Rapunzel doesn't even know where to start with that. Thinking that because Rapunzel cares for others means that she doesn't care for Cassandra is absurd.

Rapunzel concludes that to get through to her, she needs to give Cassandra something that she hasn't offered anyone else, so she knows she's special to Rapunzel. But what could she offer? Rapunzel will have to figure that out.

Then after Rapunzel gave her speech about the painting and her relationship with Cassandra, she changed to... shy Cass? She was certainly apologetic. Was it Rapunzel's opening up that she responded to? But Rapunzel had tried numerous times in the past week to open up, only to get angry Cass in response. So that doesn't seem like a reliable method. She's glad it worked this time...

Until it didn't. Pressing Cassandra to talk about her memories made her freak out. Not in her usual angry way, or even the upset way she took off after their altercation in the front hall. She seemed severely distressed - even scared.

And Cassandra had looked at her reflection without a problem during their conversation, but once Rapunzel pushed her to talk about her memory, she freaked out and clawed at the mirror.

"It will break again, it always breaks." She had talked before about her memory in pieces. So she keeps trying to pull herself together, only to fall apart again...

Surely these things are connected to the same problems she has with her moods. She's lost her ability to control her mood and has problems with memory loss. Rapunzel feels terribly about pushing Cassandra too hard. Now she's somewhere in the castle, alone, dealing with something that makes her upset enough to demolish rooms.

Rapunzel stops in her tracks. Was that why Cassandra had destroyed parts of the castle before Rapunzel had arrived? Rapunzel would have attributed it to anger, except she had never heard the castle breaking after the times Cassandra had gotten angry at her and stormed off. Cassandra struggling with her memory and getting upset might explain the mystery of the broken black rock structures in the castle. And it definitely seems to explain the mystery of the scratched reflections.

"Looks like I'll have to update my notes," Rapunzel says to herself as she walks back to her room. She has to eat and ready herself for the day. She hopes Cassandra will come find her again, but that doesn't feel likely. Rapunzel will probably be spending a lot of the day looking for her.

She's not even sure what she'd say. She just wants to be there for Cassandra.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Tenth Day

Rapunzel didn't find Cassandra the day before. Not for lack of trying - she must have checked every room and hallway in the castle while calling out for Cassandra. (She did discover the origin of the crashes: an entire corridor of black rock and half of a room of the original castle had been torn apart.) She even went into the tunnels, although she was too nervous to stay down there for long. She recognizes she'll probably just have to wait for Cassandra to find her again.

She's standing in a hallway looking out the window towards the ocean when she hears a voice behind her.

"What are you doing here?"

Rapunzel whirls around. "Cass," she says, relieved. She's so overcome by seeing M-C standing behind her that she doesn't register the question at first.

"I'm- I was looking for you," Rapunzel expresses. "I knew you were upset, and I wanted to be there for you…"

M-C considers Rapunzel intently, tilting her head, and she doesn't respond. Rapunzel shifts uncomfortably under her gaze. Rapunzel had free rein of the kingdom - Cassandra told her that herself. Why would Cassandra ask her why she was there?

"Cass," Rapunzel says again, fear growing in her the longer the silence stretched. She tries to convince herself she's just being paranoid. "Do you know who I am?"

With her voice devoid of expression and her voice devoid of emotion, M-C answers, "No."

Rapunzel feels fear shoot through her. That can't be true. "It's Rapunzel," she says, urgency growing in her voice. "Remember? Your best friend."

M-C is standing completely still like a statue, and her eyes don't leave Rapunzel's. Rapunzel's about to add another desperate attempt to spark recognition, when M-C cuts her off.

"My best friend. My," she says and frowns deeply in thought for a few moments. "...I don't know who I am either."

Rapunzel's breath catches in her throat. She puts a hand to her mouth. Cassandra's forgotten everything. This can't be happening. "You're Cassandra," she prompts. "You- you have to remember. You're Cassandra and you're from Corona and you're my best friend." Her voice shakes at the end.

When Rapunzel first learned that her parent's memories had been erased, she felt not only sadness, but fear. It was only Xavier's assurance that the effects of the Saporian memory wand would wear off - eventually - and the support of her friends around her that kept her together. The thought of someone dear to her becoming a stranger was burdened with the trauma she experienced at Gothel's hands: in a single moment the person she loved most had become a stranger who had been lying to, imprisoning, and using her for her entire life. Her parents not recognizing her and behaving so differently towards her had dredged up terror she didn't even realize she had.

And now, Cassandra. Cassandra who Rapunzel learned in the Dark Kingdom held secret grudges against her, who had suffered dramatic changes from the Moonstone, and who now cannot remember anything. At least when Cassandra still had all of the memories that they shared together, Rapunzel had been convinced that under all her anger and instability, the emotional bond they shared was real. Without those memories, is even that last connection gone?

M-C's eyebrows draw together, and she walks towards Rapunzel. Rapunzel backs away without meaning to - but this is a stranger in front of her. M-C leans against the window alcove and crosses her arms.

"What else?" She asks. Her emotionlessness has given way to a vague curiosity.

Rapunzel hesitates, her fear just barely starting to decrease with the shift in M-C's demeanor. Pushing down how scared she feels, Rapunzel tries to remind herself of what Cassandra had said before fleeing the day before. "It's all there somewhere." Cassandra isn't lost. She refuses to concede that Cassandra is lost.

Rapunzel realizes that perhaps, like with her parents, she could help Cassandra recover her memories by going over them with her. "Do you…" she starts hesitantly. "...Want me to tell you everything?"

M-C thinks for a moment. "Yes," she answers.

"O-okay," Rapunzel says. She swallows hard and moves to lean against the window alcove near M-C. "I don't know all the details," she says, "so I can only tell you parts…"

Rapunzel feels M-C's gaze boring into the side of her face. "That's alright," M-C tells her.

Rapunzel plays with her hands in front of her, trying to keep herself from shaking. Where does she even begin?

She knows where to begin. She just doesn't want to. But Rapunzel's sure that omitting any details wouldn't be productive.

"There was this woman... named Gothel," Rapunzel starts.

She tells M-C everything. Well, everything she knows - Gothel's use of the Sundrop flower, her abandoning Cassandra as a toddler to kidnap Rapunzel, the guard captain adopting Cassandra and teaching her combat and riding and the ways of the kingdom, her work in Corona castle and how she met Rapunzel, the way she helped Rapunzel so much in teaching her about the outside world, the way they became friends during the Contest of the Crowns…

...Rapunzel's need to escape her father's stifling control and the trip Cassandra took her on beyond the walls that reawoke the Sundrop in her, all of the events they experienced together in Corona before they left on the journey to the Dark Kingdom, the fight with Varian and how her powers reacted with the black rocks…

...Their adventures beyond Corona's walls with the rest of their company in Vardaros, the Forest of No Return, the wilderness beyond, the island…

And then the Great Tree.

Rapunzel falters when she reaches that point in the story. It was the beginning of the rift between her and Cassandra. How does she describe it? She decides just to state how things happened - Cassandra not wanting to go through it but Rapunzel choosing to anyway to save time, learning it was Zhan Tiri's domain, discovering the decay spell and how she couldn't stop it once she started - until their argument that night.

"You, um, wanted to keep moving through the night," Rapunzel says. "You wanted to get out of the tree as soon as possible. You didn't trust Adira and you had a really bad feeling… but I told you that we had to make camp and wait until the next day, and we kind of yelled at each other… then you gave up and you were really sad while everyone else made camp, and I tried to talk to you about it and I thought things were okay but now…" Rapunzel takes a deep breath. "I don't know if they were. I think I was really mean to you." Rapunzel remembers the conversation. Cassandra had smiled at her like things were okay, but Rapunzel wonders if it was just a facade so Rapunzel would stop bothering her...

"Then, um, Hector attacked us, like you thought he was going to. You fought him and threw him over a ledge to fall deep into the tree, but he must have taken the spear out of the tree's heart because he appeared again with it and it looked like he was possessed by the tree's vines… I was scared and he was going to hurt our friends, you said that you could take the spear to stop him if I helped you get out of the vines, but I panicked and used the decay spell instead. The tree started falling apart and our friends got away but you didn't want to leave without me and I couldn't stop the spell, so you tried to grab me to shake me out of it, but touching me during the spell hurt your hand really badly." Rapunzel pauses. "I, um, I don't know if it's still hurt or not. This was about a year ago, so… It might have healed, I don't know." Rapunzel looks at M-C's blue gauntlet where her arms are crossed. M-C is staring at the ground across the hallway as she listens to the story, and she doesn't acknowledge Rapunzel's implicit question.

"Can I… Can you show me?" Rapunzel asks her.

M-C doesn't move. "No," she answers.

"Oh, u-um," Rapunzel stutters. "O-okay. Does it… feel different than the other one?"

"Continue the story," M-C tells her instead. After an almost imperceptible hesitation she adds, "please."

"Oh, okay, um," Rapunzel tries to remember what happened next. "There were a bunch of suits of armor in part of the tree and they were scattered around after the tree fell apart, and you found pieces that fit you, so you started wearing a suit of armor… You acted like everything was okay but I didn't think it was, you didn't talk about what happened in the tree…"

Rapunzel describes their encounter with Hookhand and their rediscovery of the caravan. She tells M-C about how they were looking for supplies when Rapunzel insisted Cassandra talk to her, leading Rapunzel to lose her memories.

"But, um, you didn't sit me down and tell me everything like I'm doing for you," Rapunzel says nervously. "You had a plan for undoing the spell with a potion, but I don't know how to reverse what happened to you… So you kinda lied to me about saving me from ruffians and led me around the woods looking for potion ingredients while telling me you were bringing me back to my tower. Which I totally get!" Rapunzel assures her. "It's- it's okay that you lied. I don't know if I would have believed you if you told me the truth…" Rapunzel has an uncomfortable realization. "Do- Do you believe me right now about all of this?"

Like the day Rapunzel told M-C about the book she had read, M-C has not moved a muscle the entire time Rapunzel was speaking. Rapunzel's pretty sure her gaze hasn't moved from the spot on the floor she was looking at across the hallway. She doesn't answer.

"Um," Rapunzel says awkwardly after a short silence. "Should I c-"

"Continue," M-C interrupts her. Again she adds, "please."

Rapunzel thinks to herself that surely Cassandra at least believes all the situations Rapunzel described where she refused to talk about something, since she's doing that right now. At the very least Rapunzel feels reassured that despite her memory loss, this is still Cassandra. Irritating, obstinate Cassandra. Her Cassandra.

Rapunzel tells her about the way she found out Cassandra was lying to her, and their reconciliation. Rapunzel internally reflects on that conversation. Cassandra had said "I won't always be mad at you, I'll get over it" about her hand. Rapunzel wonders if that's true - Cassandra certainly held numerous grudges against her. Surely what happened to her hand is part of that too, although she hasn't said anything about it...

Rapunzel details the bizarre House of Yesterday's Tomorrows, and the magic that happened to them within. She notes that while she was trapped in a dream world, the house showed Cassandra her childhood with Gothel, which upset her.

She tells M-C about how they finally reached the Dark Kingdom, an abandoned wasteland with dark clouds and huge spikes across the landscape. She says that outside of the abandoned palace Adira revealed that she had no idea what would happen when Rapunzel touched the Moonstone, and it was possible that the energy released could kill her. Rapunzel notes that Cassandra was angry at Adira for withholding this information, but something changed when they approached the palace: Cassandra said that she had seen the place before, and she used her blood to open the gates of black rock, shortly before saying that the Moonstone was her destiny and taking off towards the chamber.

"Um, so then I found out you were actually really angry with me about a lot of things," Rapunzel says about their confrontation in the Moonstone chamber. "You said I was a bad friend, and that you deserved to take the stone and you were tired of being overlooked and not given a chance, that the Moonstone chose you… I didn't really understand some of the things you were saying, I still don't. But I get what you were saying about me being a bad friend… I was always the one making decisions, I took you for granted and didn't appreciate enough everything you'd do for me, I was mean to you and didn't make up for it well enough… I didn't understand then but I do now." Rapunzel takes a deep breath. As much as she wants to apologize again, this Cassandra can't remember it all anyway, and it would be better if she stuck to the story chronologically.

"When you grabbed the stone there was a huge blast of energy," Rapunzel continues. "I was so scared because Adira said that no one could touch the stone, it would explode whenever someone tried. So there was this blast and all the black rocks in the chamber broke and I thought that the stone hurt you or... killed you. But you were okay, the Moonstone was on your chest and you had new armor and your hair was blue like the stone, and you just kind of… disappeared," Rapunzel says, distressed by the memory. "You took off without saying anything, and you made black rock spikes as you left. I have no idea where you went, and I still don't."

Rapunzel shares how she and the rest of their company returned to Corona via airship because the kingdom was in danger, and how Rapunzel didn't see Cassandra again.

"It was… Months had passed after we got things back to normal, mostly," Rapunzel says. "I was really really upset that you had taken the stone and left me… after everything we did together and how you promised you'd protect me and be by my side to help me fulfill my destiny, it felt like a huge betrayal. I- I wanted to look for you, but you were so mad the last time I saw you…" Rapunzel feels tears start to build in her eyes. "I just wanted you to be happy, and it sounded like you were really unhappy with me. I made you so sad and angry I thought you were better off without me wherever you had gone. I didn't… want to mess with your life anymore. Your dad wanted to go looking for you when I told him what happened back in Corona, and I told him not to. I thought… I thought that if you wanted, if it would make you happy, you'd come back." Rapunzel wipes tears from her face.

"And then you did," Rapunzel says, sniffling. "Except you weren't happy. I was putting on a birthday party for Eugene, and everyone was in the throne room for it, and you showed up… but you weren't happy. You were really, really mad. You threw the tables across the room with the black rocks and tried to attack my father, and you were saying things I didn't understand… you said he took someone and he was a monster, that he ruined someone, I don't know what you were talking about. I tried to calm you down but it didn't work, and we ended up fighting…" Rapunzel plays with her hands nervously. She hopes that the description of their fighting wouldn't end up making this Cassandra consider them enemies.

She tells M-C about how she was knocked out in the fight, that Cassandra started destroying everything… and everything that had happened since. She finishes with her realization about Cassandra's memory problems - certainly confirmed now, since Cassandra doesn't remember anything.

"And… that's the end of it," Rapunzel finishes awkwardly. Rapunzel's voice feels hoarse. She had pushed herself up so she could sit fully on the edge of the window alcove, since she was there for hours talking. M-C did not move at all.

She wonders what Cassandra would possibly say in response. Did she believe Rapunzel? Did any of it spark her memories back?

Finally, she answers, without looking at Rapunzel: "I don't think I like that story."

Rapunzel is rattled by this response. "Oh, um," she starts. "It's not over yet, that's only the parts up to this point… you can still make it a story you like," she tries to say encouragingly. Not only did the story fail to bring back any of her memories, but Rapunzel had assumed that Cassandra abandoned Rapunzel and Corona to seek a better life… hearing Cassandra's response now, Rapunzel is made sure of it. Cassandra really was unhappy with her life. Even without memories she can tell that. Rapunzel tries to ignore the pain in her chest.

M-C pushes herself off from where she was leaning. Turning her head towards Rapunzel slightly she adds, "But thank you for telling it to me."

Rapunzel blinks, realizing that again M-C ignored Rapunzel's words to continue her first thought. M-C starts to walk down the hallway, but when Rapunzel gets up to follow her saying "wait," she raises a hand to open a door through one of her black rock walls and disappears through it, sealing the wall again behind her.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel doesn't see M-C the rest of the day, despite how she darted through rooms to navigate to the one M-C had disappeared into - she was gone by the time Rapunzel got there the roundabout way.

Rapunzel spends more time that evening flipping through her notes, adding more details now that she thought of their entire relationship in detail for recounting earlier that day.

Well, if Cassandra can't remember anything, then maybe I can convince her to give me the Moonstone and get the kingdom back to normal, Rapunzel thinks to herself.

She had tried for hours to distract herself with pragmatic thoughts, but alone in her bed Rapunzel can no longer ignore the pain knowing her friend was so miserable with her and now doesn't remember her.

Chapter Text

Eleventh Day

The next morning Rapunzel again searches for M-C, but her determination falters quickly. She has spent so many hours throughout the past week and a half looking for her and has only successfully managed to find her a couple of times. Still, Rapunzel had decided at least to make an attempt before spending the afternoon working on fixing homes in the capital, so she wanders the hallways of the castle calling for her.

Rapunzel enters one of the castle's drawing rooms during her search, and a wave of nostalgia hits as she remembers the times she'd play board games and card games with Pascal, Eugene, and Cassandra there. She walks over to what used to be elegant cabinets that stored the games, now largely a collection of splintered wood under rubble from a collapsed wall. She reaches past black rock spikes to lift what was once a finely engraved cabinet door, and within she finds a chessboard and an upended box of pieces on the broken shelf. Pulling out the chessboard, she sees the chess pieces had been scattered through the remains of the cabinet.

Driven by that earlier sense of nostalgia, Rapunzel meticulously locates the missing pieces - except for one pawn that she can't find - and takes the board and box with her as she continues her search for M-C.

As Rapunzel had expected, the search is unsuccessful. She returns to her room as it approaches noon, and while putting together a lunch for herself she looks at the chessboard and feels silly that she had even picked it up. In the tower she'd play chess a lot - but that was with Pascal. She has no one to play with here.

Except for M-C. But it seems incredibly unlikely that Rapunzel would manage to convince her to play a game of chess. Does Cassandra even remember how to play chess? Rapunzel immediately represses the pain of the thought. She knows she can't let despair consume her.

Rapunzel takes a deep breath. Perhaps she could play chess… against herself. She's familiar enough with Pascal's playstyle, maybe she could replicate it.

She decides to try a game or two before heading into the capital, and she leaves her room for one of the gardens to recreate the games she and Pascal would play together outside.

After one rather-unsatisfying game against herself with the missing pawn replaced with a small stone, Rapunzel sets up the pieces again to try again. Maybe she could make it more unexpected by writing down different moves on slips of paper and pulling them at random from a bowl.

While she's pondering the absurd idea, the back of her neck prickles with the sensation of being watched. She looks up immediately, seeking M-C.

But there's no one around. She gets up from her chair to walk towards the castle slowly, looking for M-C's glowing hair behind one of the castle windows. Not finding anything, she turns back towards the chess table and feels a jolt of shock seeing M-C behind her, standing behind the board and looking intently at the pieces.

"Oh, whew, gosh, you scared me, Cass," Rapunzel tells her, putting a hand to her chest. "You- you're here, I've been looking for you. Well not right now, obviously," she adds, gesturing to the chess table. "But, you know, before, I was looking for you."

Rapunzel is aware that she's babbling from the adrenaline rush. M-C looks up at her expressionlessly and doesn't speak.

"I wanted to talk to you," Rapunzel continues. "I was wondering- I know you can't remember anything, so I was wondering if you might be okay with giving me the stone in your armor. Since it doesn't mean anything to you, but it would mean the world to me."

M-C stands as a statue, watching her. She does not respond.

"Ah," Rapunzel says uncertainly. "You might remember, that story I told you yesterday… about the stone, and how I'm supposed to reunite it with the Sundrop, and that power's inside of me, so…"

M-C continues to stand silently.

"...I kind of need the stone," Rapunzel says earnestly. "It's my destiny to fix what happened, these powers being separated and causing the spikes to destroy things. It's really, really important. So would you give it to me?"

M-C looks down at the chessboard without answering. She delicately picks up the pebble Rapunzel had replaced the missing pawn with, and the other pawn next to it. Tossing the pebble aside, she studies the pawn in her hand and creates a copy in her other hand from black rock. She places them back in their spots on the table.

"Uh," Rapunzel starts. "Thank you, Cass, but please answer me. I know you don't like it when I try to make you talk when you don't want to… but please at least give me some sign that you remember me from yesterday."

M-C doesn't look at her - she stares at the board again in silence. Abruptly she sits in the chair across from Rapunzel's at the table.

"Oh, um," Rapunzel says nervously. "Is… is this it? You want to play chess like we used to?"

Rapunzel doesn't think she mentioned yesterday that they'd play games together, but maybe other parts of Cassandra's memory are starting to come back. She hopes that's the case.

Rapunzel walks over to take her spot across from M-C. Sitting in front of the white pieces, Rapunzel makes her move first, and waits expectantly for M-C to take her turn.

She doesn't. She continues to stare at the board with great intensity, looking between each individual piece in turn. Finally she lifts a knight on her side, but she doesn't place it down. She holds it in her hand, studying it.

"Oh, that's a knight, do you remember? It moves in a kind of L-like shape… don't ask me why, I never figured it out," Rapunzel says, laughing weakly. M-C continues to stare at the piece.

The longer M-C's silence and motionlessness stretches, Rapunzel feels all the despair she had been repressing hit her in a wave.

"You… you were a knight, too," Rapunzel says quietly. "I know you probably don't remember, but you were a knight. You protected me…"

M-C looks up at her, still expressionless, for a moment before looking back down.

"I tried to push you away," Rapunzel continues, looking down at the table and feeling guilt fill her. "I didn't want people to think I was weak, so I told you that I didn't need your help. But I was wrong," she confesses. "I- I've always needed your help, with everything. And you always saved me from danger, I don't even know how many times I would've been hurt without you there for me. And even after I told you I didn't need you, you kept protecting me."

M-C doesn't move while Rapunzel speaks. At the end Rapunzel takes a shaky breath, and they sit in silence. Rapunzel looks down, thinking of all the times Cassandra had kept her from getting hurt, and how there came a point she stopped saying thank you.

After a few moments, M-C knocks all the pieces off the board with two sharp swipes of her hand, making Rapunzel jump at the sudden motion and the clattering of the pieces.

M-C reaches across the table to place the black knight down on the board, and Rapunzel sees that she had left one piece behind: Rapunzel's white queen. M-C puts the knight next to the queen, and she studies the two pieces.

Rapunzel shakes off her surprise. "Is that- is that us?" She asks, but at her questioning M-C stands and begins walking back towards the castle.

Rapunzel gets out of her chair. "W-wait!" She cries after M-C, but M-C immediately leaps high into the air, grabbing hold of a spike far up on the castle's wall. Without looking back at Rapunzel, she jumps away and out of sight.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Twelfth Day

Rapunzel had plenty of time to think the day before when she was working in the capital. She decided that surely M-C does remember some things - she knew what the queen chess piece was, and she put her knight next to it, which means that Rapunzel's words must have meant something to her. It wasn't much to go on, but Rapunzel still feels some reassurance from what Cassandra had told her before her breakdown, that she has all of her memories somewhere and she just can't keep them together.

The next morning Rapunzel decides to begin committing her stay in Underworld to her journal. She had avoided it until now, thinking that it was all such a dark time that she didn't want to maintain a record to revisit later, but she finally decides that she'll be here for so long that she should start writing more things down than just her notes on her incomprehensible company.

So Rapunzel walks down to the cosmic garden, which has a stone bench near the terrace's edge facing east, and she sits outside the castle with the garden behind her to begin drawing Underworld.

She's adding finer details on the ruins of the city when she sees something from the corner of her eye, and before she can even glance up she feels herself jostled by someone sitting extremely close to her. She feels hard armor pressed up against her.

Rapunzel's mind flies into a panic. Cassandra's sitting next to her? Against her?

Rapunzel freezes. She desperately does not want to drive M-C away, and in her experience just about anything can do that. She remembers what M-C had told her: "I don't like you to see me like this." Taking her words literally, Rapunzel refrains from looking over, and she decides to try to keep her focus on her drawing. She waits, hoping for M-C to speak first.

She doesn't. Finally Rapunzel steals a glance next to her, and she sees M-C looking around at different things - parts of the castle, the view in front of them - fiddling with something in her hands on her lap. Rapunzel glances again and sees that she's building small geometric sculptures out of black rock and breaking them down again without looking at what she's doing. Rapunzel is surprised - almost every other time she'd seen M-C staying in one place she was unnaturally still. Rapunzel feels reassured by her fidgeting, which feels much more like Cassandra from before, who always needed to be doing something with her hands.

Rapunzel slowly continues her drawing. Eventually she sees in the corner of her eye M-C inclining her head over to look at Rapunzel's journal, and Rapunzel moves her quill to the margin to write in elegant cursive, "Hi Cass!"

Rapunzel pauses, waiting to see if she'd get any response. She doesn't, but M-C doesn't leave either. Rapunzel takes a deep breath through her nose and continues working on her drawing, hoping that M-C might say or do something to interact with her.

It's a couple minutes later that M-C stands quickly and, putting her hand on the railing in front of them, leaps over the edge. Rapunzel rushes to put her journal aside and look over the railing, but as she expected, M-C is nowhere to be found.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel had been wondering for several days what to offer Cassandra to communicate that she's special to Rapunzel. She figures that even though Cassandra's memory fell apart shortly after she was angered by Rapunzel's usual type of gift, surely her mind would recover to where she was before… eventually. And when she gets there, Rapunzel wants her to be convinced of her importance to Rapunzel.

Inspiration finally strikes, and Rapunzel feels ridiculous at the idea. But she can't deny that it's the best option she's come up with.

Rapunzel climbs the ladder to her bookcase reading nook and pulls out a box of momentos she stores under her pillows there. Lifting the top from it, she immediately finds what she was looking for: the friendship bracelets she made for herself and Cassandra when they became a team for the Contest of the Crowns.

Deeply meaningful? Check. A physical reminder of their friendship? Check. Insisting that they both wear the bracelets always as a visible indicator of their bond, which is something Rapunzel has with no one else? Check.

Rapunzel takes the beads from each bracelet and weaves them into a sturdier braid so that they would better withstand constant wear. She ties hers onto her wrist and decides to keep Cassandra's bracelet in her bag for the next time they encounter each other.

"I really hope this friendship bracelet saves my kingdom," Rapunzel says to herself.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel is surprised to encounter M-C when she's walking through the castle on her way to the capital - they almost bump into each other rounding a corner. M-C stares at her with matching surprise, and before M-C can flee Rapunzel pulls the blue friendship bracelet from her bag and grabs M-C's hand.

M-C offers no resistance as Rapunzel ties the bracelet to her right wrist, she just stares with startled confusion. Holding M-C's hand up, Rapunzel shows her the yellow bracelet on her own wrist, which presses against M-C's blue one. "Do you see this?" Rapunzel asks, and she continues before getting a response. "I'm not going to take mine off. Ever. I promise. Do you understand?"

M-C's blank expression does not convey understanding, and Rapunzel sighs. "These are friendship bracelets, remember? I made them for us when we first became friends. They match, and there's no others like them. I'm going to wear mine always. I know you're not really a jewelry person, but it would mean a lot to me if you wore yours too. It's a sign of how much we mean to each other."

M-C looks at the bracelet on her wrist, and Rapunzel lets go of her hand. She decides to let Cassandra sit with that, and walks past without looking back to continue to the city.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Thirteenth Day

Walking through the castle the next day, Rapunzel sees M-C in the great hall. Rapunzel pauses at the doorway before M-C can notice her and peers around to watch what she's doing, curious to find out what exactly it is Cassandra does with all the time she's not with Rapunzel.

Peaking around the doorframe, Rapunzel is reminded of early in their relationship, when she spent a few days watching Cassandra working without her knowledge in order to confirm what she already knew: that Cassandra has a good heart. (She wouldn't have needed to confirm it if Eugene had just listened to her in the first place…) In retrospect, this might have been weird of her.

And now, here she is doing it again. She thinks she's marginally more justified this time.

M-C is facing a collapsed wall, picking through the rubble at its base. She lifts a huge stone and, after investigating it for a moment, places it on the broken base of the wall.

Rapunzel blinks in surprise as M-C lifts another stone. She's rebuilding the wall, like Rapunzel's mural and all those other spots in the castle that had been meticulously reassembled. I guess she really did pick this up as a hobby, Rapunzel thinks.

Rapunzel leans forward despite herself, seeking the blue friendship bracelet on M-C's wrist, to check if she had removed it. Unfortunately it's too difficult to tell from a distance since M-C's gauntlet is blue as well, and even more unfortunately Rapunzel loses her balance and her ensuing scramble to catch herself causes enough noise that M-C turns sharply to look over.

"H…hey Cass!" Rapunzel says with nervous cheeriness, pulling herself upright and trying to look nonchalant.

M-C studies her for a moment without expression, and then she turns back towards the collapsed wall to continue her project.

Rapunzel lets go of a breath she'd been holding and wonders if Cassandra would be okay with her going over. She figures there's only one way to find out, and walks towards her.

M-C doesn't acknowledge Rapunzel's approach, and Rapunzel sees that the blue friendship bracelet is still on her wrist. She concedes that this could mean nothing, as it's possible Cassandra has forgotten what it is. But she feels excitement regardless, and she tries unsuccessfully to repress a smile.

Rapunzel watches M-C for a few moments as she continues to sort through the stones. She seems to be organizing the rubble into piles, although Rapunzel can't tell what quality separates the pieces into different sections. When M-C takes a stone from a pile and places it on the broken wall, shining blue material arises from the surface to adhere it in place, which then fades to the black of the rocks she can summon.

Rapunzel blinks in surprise again. So the mortar through all the reassembled structures really is black rock. She watches M-C pick up another stone and put it on a different place on the wall, adhering it the same way. Rapunzel sees that a concave part of the stone she places matches perfectly with a convex part of the stone she places it on.

"Wow, who would've thought you were good at puzzles," Rapunzel comments jokingly. M-C looks back at her blankly, and Rapunzel continues: "I just mean that you never wanted to do jigsaw puzzles with me. You'd always roll your eyes when I asked. But now I see it's just because you're too good at them!" She says, gesturing towards the wall. She thinks her complimentary and lighthearted comment might finally get a reaction.

It doesn't. M-C goes back to her work, and Rapunzel tries a different approach. "Would you mind if I helped you? It might go faster, although I don't think I'm as good as you."

Still no answer. Rapunzel kneels down and picks up a stone. "Hey, I have an idea," she suggests. "What if we made a mosaic? We could use the pieces to make a picture-"

M-C snaps around, the word "No" tearing out of her harshly. Rapunzel recoils at the sudden motion and sound.

M-C puts a hand out towards Rapunzel, moving much slower seeing Rapunzel's fear. "No," she repeats hoarsely. Rapunzel wonders if this was the first time she'd spoken since three days before. M-C continues, quietly but intensely: "Everything has to go back exactly the way it was before."

Rapunzel stares at M-C, still shocked by the dramatic reaction. "Okay," Rapunzel tells her softly, reassuringly. "Okay, we can put things back the way they were."

M-C's gaze flicks between Rapunzel's eyes for a moment before she nods and turns back to her piles.

"...Can I help?" Rapunzel asks, realizing she never received permission.

M-C glances back at her, but then immediately turns back to her work. Rapunzel's heart sinks, realizing that the words they just exchanged were likely the only ones she'd get.

"...If you want," M-C says after a few moments, still organizing the rocks in front of her.

Rapunzel feels surprise run through her. "Really?" She gasps excitedly, and she realizes that her enthusiasm at the prospect of sorting rocks probably seems odd.

But M-C doesn't appear to notice. She simply nods, continuing her work.

Rapunzel feels giddy. Not only did Cassandra answer her, but she said Rapunzel can help. Cassandra never agrees to offers of help!

Her giddiness wanes when she realizes she has no idea how she's going to help. She can't sort the rubble the way M-C is doing, unless M-C explains to her the organization system, and Rapunzel's nervous that coming across as more of a burden than a help would cause Cassandra to push her away again. On top of that, a lot of the stones are big. She certainly can't lift them the same way M-C appears to be doing with ease.

Luckily when glancing over the debris, she recognizes painted stone that used to be one of the decorative pilasters lining the walls at regular intervals. She realizes that she could focus only on those pieces since they're distinct from the rest, and she begins to make a pile of her own.

M-C works quickly with her sorting. Soon she starts taking pieces from one pile and arranges them along the base of the wall, sealing them in place as she builds upwards. Rapunzel realizes that her piles must be organized by height - although she has no idea how Cassandra would be able to tell where each piece came from just by looking at the stones.

M-C leaves a blank spot as she builds up where the pilaster was. Rapunzel scrambles to catch up, but as she's holding up two pieces to compare them to see what might attach to the pilaster's base, M-C gently takes them from her.

"These go up higher," M-C murmurs, and she holds one piece in place in the air a few feet above the pilaster's base. Three slender strands of black rock spring out from around the destroyed wall - one from above and one from each side of the still-standing edges - to attach to the piece she's holding and suspend it like a spider's web. She holds the other piece slightly lower, and black rock strands materialize to hold it in place as well.

"How do you know?" Rapunzel asks, startled by her certainty.

M-C pauses as she moves back to attend to her own piles, frowning in thought. She shifts and answers, "That's how they fit together. All the pieces fit together." She picks another stone up and looks at it. "When there's something in the wrong place, the pieces don't fit together anymore. So you have to put them in the right place."

Rapunzel's not sure how to respond, considering Cassandra didn't answer her question and instead just described how a puzzle works. "Right, okay," Rapunzel starts. "I'll try to make sure to put the pieces in the right place, but I think it takes me longer to figure it out than you…"

"That's okay," M-C murmurs, again distracted by her own work.

Rapunzel looks back down at her pile, thinking about how she seems to have shy Cass as company and feeling relieved.

As they continue working, Rapunzel starts getting better at determining how her pieces fit together. She finds a few matches for the pilaster's base and very excitedly shows it to M-C, who nods silently at Rapunzel's work, and blue material rises from the stones to seal them in place.

Rapunzel is thrilled. She's working with Cassandra on something, and they're getting along well! She wishes it would never end, but soon M-C has finished the rest of the wall. She moves to help Rapunzel with the pilaster, starting from the top working downwards to Rapunzel's work. Rapunzel notices that when she reaches the two pieces she had suspended in the air, they fit perfectly where she placed them.

At the end of it Rapunzel had barely managed to find a dozen matches for where the pieces go, and M-C had found what must have been hundreds. Rapunzel presses her last piece into the restored pilaster, and M-C seals it in place.

"Wow, it's perfect!" Rapunzel says, beaming as she steps back to look at the restored wall.

M-C studies it carefully, her eyes darting around to inspect different areas. Finally she nods very slightly, and she turns her head towards Rapunzel but looks towards the floor.

"Thank you... Rapunzel," M-C tells her quietly.

Rapunzel feels herself start buzzing with excitement. She called Rapunzel by name! "Of course, Cass," Rapunzel responds, smiling at her. "I like doing things with you."

M-C's expression abruptly shifts from neutral to anxious, and Rapunzel barely has time to notice her apparent change in mood before M-C turns and runs full tilt towards the doors at the end of the hall.

"W-what? Where are you-!"

Rapunzel, as always, tries to follow. And, as always, once she reaches the doorway M-C disappeared through, M-C is nowhere to be found.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Fourteenth Day

Rapunzel finds herself pacing in thought the next morning. It didn't feel like a coincidence that shy Cassandra fled immediately after calling Rapunzel by name. Was it possible that she hadn't recognized Rapunzel until that point, and once she remembered who Rapunzel was, got caught up in her "I don't like you to see me like this" insecurity?

Rapunzel sighs in frustration. She could help Cassandra so much more if she didn't insist on fleeing from Rapunzel. They should be working together! Rapunzel's certain that Cassandra would recover much faster with Rapunzel's help than struggling alone.

"This is worse than the time with her broken leg," Rapunzel mutters.

Rapunzel thinks through the last few days. So far she'd gone over Cassandra's memories with Cassandra - for hours - and it didn't help; she'd tried to do an activity with her that they used to do together - a chess game - and it didn't help; she'd tried sitting in silence and waiting for Cassandra to speak first and it didn't help; she'd tried offering a friendship bracelet and - well, that's still pretty inconclusive; and she'd tried to help Cassandra on her project and it did help, until it didn't again.

Rapunzel puts a hand to her forehead, frustrated. The slow progress is driving her insane.

Drawing her hand down her face it occurs to her that she is viewing the situation through only her own perspective again.

"Doing things in her own way in her own time," Rapunzel says to herself. She tries to think of the last few days in a different light.

Rapunzel only assumed that most of the things hadn't helped, because she couldn't see immediate improvement. But she doesn't know what's happening in Cassandra's head - maybe there were changes that Cassandra didn't express out loud. And besides that, Rapunzel had been calling this progress "slow," but maybe it wasn't slow - she has no idea what this problem Cassandra has even is. It's possible that Cassandra is having an entirely normal recovery experience.

Rapunzel takes a deep breath. Patience, right, she thinks to herself. Being frustrated with Cassandra will get her nowhere. I have to come up with a way to help her within her comfort zone.

She manages to come up with a couple of ideas, and she lists them out:

• Cassandra appeared on the balcony to listen when I was playing the guitar and singing. Music is connected to memory - if she hears me playing songs I've played in front of her before, she might remember those times.
• If I find her working on rebuilding the castle again, I could offer to help, and we'd work together again. She might talk to me more. And if I can't find her while she's working, maybe I could suggest it the next time I see her, or start rebuilding something myself and she'd decide to help if she sees me.
• Cassandra doesn't like gifts, but she kept the friendship bracelet. I could try to give her something else that could help her remember things.

Rapunzel tilts her head looking over these, tapping her quill. The only option that is likely fully within Cassandra's comfort zone is the first one - the other two involve engaging with her directly. But, Rapunzel does have some reason to believe they could work.

She decides to start with the first one, and she grabs her guitar to head down to the gardens.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel almost knocks into M-C outside her door as she leaves her room.

"Woah!" Rapunzel says in surprise. "S-sorry Cass! I didn't see you there."

M-C steps back gracefully with her head bowed. "It's not a problem, your highness," she answers softly.

Rapunzel chokes on her breath. She would think Cassandra was mocking her, if not for the body language that matched exactly how she acted early as Rapunzel's Lady-in-Waiting and whenever they were in front of Rapunzel's parents or foreign diplomats.

"W-what?" Rapunzel manages to get out.

"It's not a problem, your highness," M-C repeats without raising her head.

The combination of shock and the dramatic contrast between M-C's demure behavior and her harsh armor - and everything she'd done in the past few months - almost makes a hysterical laugh break out from Rapunzel, but she stops it. She feels like she's losing her mind.

"W-why are you calling me that?" Rapunzel stutters again.

M-C finally glances up at her with a vaguely confused expression. "Because…" she begins uncertainly, "You're the princess."

"Well don't!"

The words come out sharper than she intends them to, but Rapunzel is still gripped with panic.

M-C frowns. "Ah... " She starts, "Of course, your-" she stops with a puzzled expression. "What should I call you?"

"Rapunzel! Or- or Raps!" Rapunzel cries. "We call each other by our first names, don't you remember, Cass?" She stops herself from grabbing M-C to shake her.

M-C's blank expression does not convey a sign of remembering.

Rapunzel grabs the blue bag from her side and holds it up in her free hand. "You- you gave this to me! You gave this to me as a gift and told me to call you Cass! And I told you to call me Rapunzel. You don't-" Rapunzel feels her eyes start to mist in spite of herself. "You don't remember?"

M-C looks at the bag Rapunzel is holding up. "I think you might be confusing me with someone else, y-" she quickly corrects herself, "Rapunzel. But I can call you that, if you wish."

"No! D-don't just call me that because I tell you to!" Rapunzel tells her, distressed. "You- you have to mean it! It's not an order, you call me that because we're friends!"

M-C's eyes dart to the side, as though she's looking for a sign that she's being pranked, or some approval from another person that she's right in thinking the princess is out of her mind. She isn't acting like the bizarre shy version of her Underworld self, Rapunzel could tell - she's acting as she did before they were friends.

"Oookay," M-C says carefully, looking back at her. "Sure, Rapunzel."

"You still don't get it!" Rapunzel cries again. "You don't remember! Look- look around you, Cass! You're not a servant!"

M-C glances around, frowning, while Rapunzel takes a deep breath. She can't let herself lose her mind - she already knew Cassandra had memory problems, this shouldn't have flustered her so badly. But it was one thing to know about it, and another to have it happening in front of her. At least Cassandra's behavior wasn't entirely foreign, it was just from the wrong time.

Rapunzel leans forward to grab M-C's right hand, and holds it up for her to see. "Look, you're wearing armor, and the friendship bracelet I made for you! You're not my servant, Cass, you're my friend. And- and so much has happened since we first met. Look at our hair, and outside the windows. This isn't the same Corona you think it is."

M-C frowns at her hand in front of her, and she doesn't drop it when Rapunzel lets go of her. It abruptly occurs to Rapunzel that her outburst might confuse Cassandra in the same way she'd made Cassandra fall apart in her bedroom several days ago. She holds her breath, watching M-C nervously and hoping that she won't forget who Rapunzel is and take off to destroy more of the castle.

M-C slowly lowers her hand. She pushes open the door to Rapunzel's room and walks towards the window near her vanity. Rapunzel follows closely, anxiously, leaving her guitar on her bed and hoping that Cassandra won't fling herself out the window, as she is wont to do.

She doesn't. She stops in front of it and stares out with a troubled expression.

"It's- a lot has happened," Rapunzel says, standing slightly behind her. "I'm sorry. Do… do you want me to tell you about it?"

M-C doesn't respond, and after a few moments she turns away from the window to walk a few steps to the foot of Rapunzel's bed and she slowly sinks onto the bench there. She looks towards the ground across the room, her eyes not focused on anything.

Rapunzel realizes she might have rattled Cassandra badly enough she won't be getting any response. She thinks that it's possible trying to tell Cassandra more information could worsen it.

Rapunzel moves to sit next to Cassandra on the bench. She doesn't know what to do, so after a few moments she decides to fall back on her original plan.

"Hey, Cass," she starts softly. "I was going to play some music. Would that be okay?"

M-C doesn't say anything. Rapunzel expected this. She reaches back for her guitar, and pulling it onto her lap she starts playing a gentle tune without any lyrics.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C sits motionless for almost an hour. Rapunzel had been playing music the whole time, but since she can only repeat songs for so long, she puts her guitar down.

Rapunzel figures it's entirely possible that Cassandra will abruptly snap out of her haze at any moment and throw herself out the window without a word to disappear for another 1-2 business days. But despite knowing she likely won't be able to speak to Cassandra any further, Rapunzel certainly doesn't want to leave her alone.

So she stands to get her journal and paints, and she sits back down next to M-C to start drawing the wall-rebuilding they did together the day before.

Another fifteen minutes must have passed before M-C finally moves, lifting a hand to her face to drag down it. Rapunzel's eyes flick up from her page to glance discreetly at her, but when M-C's head turns slightly towards her, Rapunzel quickly looks away again.

Rapunzel continues her drawing, expecting M-C to take off. M-C's posture barely straightens as she looks up and around Rapunzel's room. She glances towards Rapunzel again and Rapunzel carefully keeps her gaze on her drawing. After a few moments, M-C's hands reach over to the journal in Rapunzel's lap, and Rapunzel lifts her quill as M-C gently pulls the journal over to herself.

Rapunzel watches her as M-C slowly turns a page backwards and looks at the drawing of Underworld. She flips backwards again, to an earlier entry, and then again. Rapunzel waits patiently while M-C looks through her journal. She considers offering to explain each entry to Cassandra, but she decides against it. Cassandra can determine the meaning herself.

Rapunzel doesn't have any particular rule about people looking at her journal. It's not like she has a lock on it, or tells people not to read it. She draws in it in front of her friends, and she shows them her illustrations sometimes. She felt an intense invasion of privacy when her father read her journal in secret and told the contents to Cassandra's father, who decided to send Cassandra to a convent. But that was a pretty large exception, and if any of her friends asked if they could look at her journal, she would probably let them. Besides the night beyond the walls she's never had any secret to hide.

Slowly flipping through, M-C pauses slightly longer on the page Rapunzel drew of the moments after she grabbed the Moonstone. Her eyes barely narrow upon seeing the drawing of Adira from when they first met. She pauses again on the illustration from Rapunzel's last birthday, of the broken wall with spikes pointing out to the open landscape and lanterns drifting overhead. She tilts her head at the page showing the cursed tree at Janice Point, glowing purple with the portal opening behind it and the ghost Sugracha in front. She stops entirely at the illustration of their night beyond the walls, which shows Rapunzel poised to touch the black spike she kneels in front of, Cassandra watching from behind.

M-C lifts her hand and touches her fingertips to Rapunzel's outstretched hand in the drawing. She's still staring at it when starts to turn the next page, and Rapunzel realizes with a bolt of fear that on the next page is a drawing of her father wearing his Corona regalia with the sun crest.

Rapunzel grabs the journal from M-C, snapping it shut, and M-C looks up at her with a vaguely confused expression.

"It's… uh," Rapunzel starts, trying to think of an explanation. "There isn't much else. That's pretty much everything."

M-C blinks without changing expression, and she slowly turns her head back down to look at her lap, as though Rapunzel's journal was still there.

"Y-you should make one," Rapunzel blurts out, trying to think of something to say to keep M-C from reverting into her haze. "A journal, I mean. If you liked looking at mine, you should make one. You could write and draw in it, things that you remember or that make you happy. I- I know it wasn't really your thing before, but you like art now, right?"

M-C looks back up at Rapunzel while she speaks, but her face remains blank. Rapunzel stands quickly, saying, "H-here, let me get you one! An empty one. I've got a lot of sketchbooks…" Rapunzel hurries to her bookcase, and scales part of her ladder to reach up and pull down a leather-bound book. She flips it open, making sure all the pages are blank, before hopping back down the ladder and walking back to M-C.

"Here," Rapunzel says, holding the book out towards M-C like an offering. "If- if you want. But I think you might like it. I know when I feel overwhelmed, I always feel better after writing or drawing about it…"

M-C slowly reaches out and takes the sketchbook. She opens it and flips through the empty pages, the same way she looked through Rapunzel's journal.

Rapunzel watches M-C anxiously for a couple moments. When M-C reaches the first page of the book, Rapunzel leans towards the bench and picks up her quill, offering it to M-C. "You can draw in it," Rapunzel tells her.

M-C looks at the quill and hesitates before taking it. She looks back down at the page, but doesn't start drawing. Rapunzel sits next to M-C again and decides it would be better for her to focus on her own journal rather than watching M-C and making her self-conscious. Rapunzel picks up her bag, pulling out a small paintbrush and one of the tins of paint she keeps, to continue working on her journal entry for the day before.

About a minute later, Rapunzel sees M-C move out of the corner of her eye and hears the scratch of a quill on paper. Rapunzel feels a rush of excitement. She didn't expect it would actually work. It takes all of Rapunzel's willpower not to look over immediately and watch M-C draw.

They continue like that, sitting side by side, making illustrations in their journals. Finally M-C lifts the quill, and after waiting for a few moments for the last ink to dry, closes hers.

Rapunzel suppresses a wave of disappointment. She hadn't realized she was hoping Cassandra would share the drawing with her. And it could have operated as a way for them to communicate when Cassandra seems reluctant to speak.

Rapunzel looks up from her own journal to offer a smile to M-C. "Do you feel any better?" She asks.

M-C's expression becomes slightly worried, and she doesn't look at Rapunzel, but she offers a small, hesitant nod.

"That's great!" Rapunzel says, delighted she got a response. M-C stands and takes a step away from the bench, clutching her new journal to her chest, but turns to offer Rapunzel's quill back to her.

Rapunzel stands too. "No, you should keep it!" Rapunzel tells her, pushing the quill back towards M-C. "So you can draw in it whenever you want. And let me get you a little jar of ink… um, it might be a lot to carry without any pockets… oh, I know!"

Rapunzel goes quickly to the wardrobe by her bed and opens it. She pulls out a brown satchel, much more drab than the rest of her feminine and floral purses. It has a few pockets inside and can be worn across the body with its long strap, the same way her blue bag can.

Rapunzel smiles and brings it back over to the bench, opening her blue bag to put some of her own art supplies into the satchel. M-C watches with a puzzled expression, and Rapunzel turns to her to take the quill and tuck it into one of the pockets. Then she reaches for M-C's journal, but M-C leans away from her.

"Oh, sorry," Rapunzel says, retracting her hand. "I'm not trying to take it, I was just going to put it in this bag for you. So you can carry it with you!"

M-C looks between Rapunzel and the satchel in her hands, and Rapunzel holds it out for her. "Here!"

M-C slowly reaches out her free hand and takes it. She opens the top of it to look inside, seeing the art supplies in one of the pockets, and the larger one left empty.

"You can put the journal in it," Rapunzel prompts her again. M-C looks at the journal in her hand for a moment before slipping it inside and closing the top flap again.

Rapunzel beams at her. "Now you can bring it anywhere with you, like I do with the bag you gave me!" Thinking of the conversation they had outside her room earlier that morning, she adds, "And you can't call me 'your highness' anymore, okay? That's what this gift means."

M-C slips the shoulder strap across her body, letting the satchel rest at her hip. Clutching the strap at her chest, she finally looks up at Rapunzel with her vaguely uncertain expression. She nods again, just barely.

Thinking about how Cassandra seems to be both in her shy mood and at least slightly responsive to her, Rapunzel is about to ask her if she'd like to work together on rebuilding part of the castle again, but M-C looks away from her and turns to start walking towards Rapunzel's balcony.

"Oh, wait, Cass!" Rapunzel says quickly, hurrying to cut her off. "I- I was wondering, do you want to hang out today? W-we could fix another part of the castle, and have lunch together. I think it would be fun!"

M-C's eyebrows draw together looking at Rapunzel standing in front of her. "I…"

Rapunzel blinks in surprise. M-C is speaking again.

"I have to check something," M-C confesses, still distressed.

Rapunzel feels disappointment, but her surprise spikes from the cryptic answer. "Oh… okay, what is it? Can I come?"

"Uhh… no," M-C responds, looking away. "Sorry."

"Oh… okay," Rapunzel says again. "Well… can we hang out later?"

"Uhh… maybe," M-C tells her, shuffling her feet.

Rapunzel's sure she has about six seconds before Cassandra launches herself out the nearest window. "I'll be back in my room at noon, if you want to come by," she says quickly.

"Okay," M-C answers, before she sidesteps around Rapunzel and backs towards the balcony window. "I don't have a lot of time, so, uhh… bye," M-C says nervously, and after a pause she adds, "Rapunzel."

She jumps out. Rapunzel rushes to the window to try to see where M-C's headed, and she catches sight of M-C dropping over the balcony's edge. Rapunzel climbs outside and leans over the railing to look, and she sees M-C leaping from part of the castle towards the perimeter walls. M-C catches a large spike that she had created during her initial rampage, and she swings around to throw herself over the wall into the city. She catches another spike and keeps jumping away towards the mainland until she's out of Rapunzel's sight.

Chapter Text

Rapunzel considers running down to the courtyard to take one of the horse specters and follow M-C, but she decides against it. M-C simply moved too quickly, Rapunzel wouldn't be able to tell where she had gone by the time she got down there.

Much to her disappointment, Rapunzel doesn't see M-C at noon for lunch. She has no idea what it could be that M-C was doing. She said she had to check something, but what could M-C have to "check" here in Underworld, much less out of the castle and city? She said she didn't have a lot of time, too - what could that mean? Rapunzel frowns, thinking of things that could be time-sensitive. The… tides?

Rapunzel resigns herself to having no answer. She figures she could ask M-C herself, although she recognizes that asking an Ouija board would be about as reliable for meaningful answers as talking to M-C.

Later that day, Rapunzel is settling down to her dinner when she hears something hit her balcony outside.

She hurries to the window to check what it was, and she sees M-C standing from a crouch, her hair glowing softly in the fading dusk.

"C-Cass," Rapunzel calls, opening the window. "Do you want to come in? It gets so cold at night…"

Which was her doing. Rapunzel wonders if Cassandra can even feel cold.

M-C walks hesitantly towards Rapunzel's window and climbs in, avoiding looking at Rapunzel. But when Rapunzel invites her to sit by the fireplace, M-C does join her, and Rapunzel sees that she still has the satchel with her.

"You're just in time," Rapunzel says, pulling a pot off of her fire. "I was about to have dinner." Rapunzel realizes this could finally be the time she asks Cassandra about her food and cooking. "Do you want any?"

M-C looks perplexed at Rapunzel's offer, and she shakes her head.

"Oh, did you already eat?" Rapunzel asks her, filling a bowl for herself.

"I… don't," M-C says, and Rapunzel is surprised enough that Cassandra answered verbally at all that she doesn't register her words for a moment.

"You-" Rapunzel pauses in her ladling. "Huh?"

"I, uh, don't… do that," M-C tells her.

"You don't… eat stew?" Rapunzel asks. That's odd - Cassandra loves her stew.

"I don't eat," M-C says, shifting uncomfortably.

Rapunzel stares blankly at her. "What?"

"I guess I used to, but I don't do that now," M-C tells her, shrugging.

Rapunzel spends a moment processing. "You don't eat?!"

"Uh… no," M-C answers again, increasingly awkwardly.

"What?! How can you not eat?!" Rapunzel cries in dismay.

"It's a little weird," M-C responds.

"A little weird?! Cass, not eating is extremely weird!"

"No, eating is a little weird," M-C clarifies.

"Wh-" Rapunzel stops herself from another confused outburst. "How long have you not eaten?"

"Ah…" M-C starts. "The whole time."

"The whole- you mean, ever since the Dark Kingdom?!"

"I… guess?" M-C answers uncertainly.

"H-how is that possible?" Rapunzel asks, aghast.

"I don't eat… and then I keep doing things," M-C tells her, "is how it's been working so far."

Rapunzel stares open-mouthed at M-C. "You- But-" Rapunzel stops herself. "So you don't even know how it is you're going about not eating."

M-C frowns, considering this. "Well, not eating is pretty easy, because it's a nonaction."

"No- I mean-" Rapunzel stutters again. "Cass, people need to eat to live. If you don't eat you starve. Are you sure that you haven't eaten that whole time? You might be forgetting, since you have trouble with your memory…"

M-C shrugs again. "I don't remember a lot of things, but I don't think I've eaten since I've been in the castle at least. I don't think there's food here."

Rapunzel opens her mouth to speak, and then closes it again. Cassandra is right - if there isn't a secret stockpile somewhere, then there isn't food in the castle. And she'd been here for months.

"I'm-" Rapunzel starts. "I'm not convinced. I think you do have food somewhere, and you're just forgetting. You should have dinner with me so you don't go hungry."

M-C makes a face. "I'd rather not."

Rapunzel holds the bowl out towards her. "Please?"

M-C leans away. "I haven't eaten anything in the past few days, I'm pretty sure I'm okay."

"That is the least okay thing you've said to me in weeks," Rapunzel whispers intensely, leaning towards M-C.

"You seem to be making a big deal out of this," M-C says uncomfortably.

"It's-!" Rapunzel stops herself from completing her sentence. The last thing she wants to do is scare Cassandra off when she's both verbal and present-minded. And not tremendously pissed off at Rapunzel. So Rapunzel takes a deep breath. "You're right, I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable. But just so you know, all the food I have here in my room is open to you too, okay? So if you ever get hungry, you can eat things here." She needs Cassandra to know that there's still food available to her, even if Cassandra can't remember where she's keeping hers.

M-C makes another face, but upon seeing Rapunzel's earnest expression, she nods reluctantly.

Another thought hits Rapunzel abruptly. "Um, Cass," she starts hesitantly. "If you don't have a place you're getting food, then… I'm going to run out. I only brought enough for three weeks."

M-C looks at her blankly for a moment. "And that would be… bad," she says experimentally.

Rapunzel screams internally. "Yes, running out of food is bad."

"So you need more food," M-C says slowly.

Rapunzel takes a deep breath through her nose. "That's right."

"But there's no food here," M-C continues, putting the puzzle pieces together.

Rapunzel holds herself back from shaking her. "As far as we know."

"So you probably need to get food… from outside of here," M-C says.

"That does seem to be a conclusion," Rapunzel chokes out.

M-C thinks about this for a few moments. Rapunzel offers, "I could ask my friends to bring food here, by writing to them with the messenger pigeon."

M-C frowns intensely. "I don't want anyone coming in."

"Right," Rapunzel answers quickly. She knows how seriously Cassandra had taken the rule about no one except her being allowed in Underworld, and she does not want to bring back enraged Cassandra. This more-talkative-but-still-shy Cassandra is ideal. "But I could ask them to come to the walls, and then we could bring it in."

M-C considers this, her eyebrows drawing together in thought. "Okay," she finally answers. "But I don't want them coming in, so the horses will bring it through the walls and to the castle."

Rapunzel is sure she's talking about the unsettling black rock horses. She suppresses a sigh of disappointment that she wouldn't be able to meet up with her friends, but she recognizes that this is probably the best she's going to get. At least she won't starve.

"That sounds like a good offer," Rapunzel tells her. "I'll write a letter tomorrow."

M-C nods slowly.

Rapunzel thinks again about where M-C could be keeping her food. "Where have you been staying, Cass?" Surely her food would be kept near there.

M-C looks at her blankly again. "The castle."

"No- I mean," Rapunzel starts, gesturing vaguely, "What room have you been staying in? Where have you been sleeping and keeping your things?"

M-C's expression becomes confused. "I don't have things. And I don't do that either."

Rapunzel frowns. "You don't do what?"

"Sleep," M-C answers.

A couple moments of silence is shattered by Rapunzel yelling, "WHAT?!" Her plan of not alienating Cassandra is out the window.

M-C rubs her neck self-consciously. "It's just another thing I don't do anymore," she answers.

"Wh-what else don't you do?!" Rapunzel cries. "A-are you-" she cuts herself off. She's not sure if she wants to hear the answer to the question, 'are you even alive?'

M-C frowns in thought. "I don't do a lot of things, because they're nonactions," she answers.

"R-right," Rapunzel stutters. "I don't mean, what are all the things you don't do, I mean… are there other things that everybody does that you don't do? Like, do you… breathe?"

M-C nods. "I breathe. I tried not breathing, but it didn't work."

Rapunzel tries to suppress her overwhelming sense of unease at Cassandra speaking as if she's not human. "A-and does your heart beat?"

M-C's eyebrows draw together. "I don't think I know."

"Y-you can check," Rapunzel tells her nervously. "If you hold one of your pulse points, at your neck or your wrist…"

M-C looks down at her hands. "I don't think I could feel it through my armor," she notes.

"You can take off your armor," Rapunzel tells her with increasing urgency. She needs to know if her friend is alive.

M-C makes a face, similar to her expression of distaste when Rapunzel offered her food. "I don't want to."

"Please?" Rapunzel chokes out. She's not even sure what she'd do if she learned Cassandra was essentially a walking corpse.

M-C frowns, refusing to answer.

"Th-then can I check for you?" Rapunzel asks desperately.

M-C looks down at the ground, still frowning, but her expression shifts to vague distress. She looks back up at Rapunzel uncertainly. "If you want," she answers, apparently willing to bend for Rapunzel's comfort.

Rapunzel lets go of the breath she'd been holding, and shuffles towards M-C, sitting on the floor next to the fireplace. She stops in front of her and looks over M-C for a place to touch her skin, but her body is entirely covered up to her neck.

Rapunzel raises one of her hands cautiously. "I-is it okay if I touch your neck?"

M-C's face twitches, but whatever expression she was about to show she suppresses and she turns her head to look towards the fire, away from Rapunzel. "If you want," she answers again.

Rapunzel tentatively reaches her hands towards M-C, and she sees red light flash in her peripheral vision. Her eyes dart down to look at M-C's armor, which must have caught the light from the fire for a moment. Rapunzel feels confused - the black rock always swallows light, so she wonders why it reflected for a moment - but her attention is redirected when her index and middle fingers gently press to the side of M-C's neck.

As soon as Rapunzel's skin touches M-C's, she feels her magic flare inside of her, and her hair begins to shine. Rapunzel's heart starts pounding at the buzzing under her skin, and she almost pulls back, but she doesn't want to alarm M-C by moving too quickly and suddenly. So she keeps her fingers pressed against M-C's neck, internally trying to steady herself, her other hand lightly brushing M-C's jaw.

She's so distracted by the magic rushing through her that she almost forgets what she intended to do: check for Cassandra's heartbeat. But her attention is brought to it without even thinking about it, as she feels a strong rhythmic pulse under her fingers.

Staring at the skin under her fingers, Rapunzel is slightly mesmerized by the sensation. It's stronger than hers ever felt, and she keeps her fingers pressed against it for slightly too long. M-C turns her head slightly to look back at Rapunzel, and Rapunzel looks up to see she'd leaned towards M-C without realizing it. Flustered by how close their faces had gotten and embarrassed that she'd been touching M-C for so long, Rapunzel pulls away immediately, taking her hand away from M-C's neck, and she feels her magic subside within her as her hair stops glowing.

"I-It does," Rapunzel stutters, feeling breathless. "Your heart, I mean - it still beats. You still have a heartbeat." Rapunzel doesn't look at M-C, and she fidgets with her hands in her lap.

From the corner of her eye, Rapunzel sees M-C nod. A silence stretches awkwardly between them, and Rapunzel desperately tries to think of something else to say.

But M-C stands before she can come up with something. "Uh, thanks," M-C tells her. "For checking."

"Y-yeah," Rapunzel answers, finally glancing up at her. "Any time."

"And for offering me the…" M-C gestures vaguely at Rapunzel's pot. "Food."

"Right," Rapunzel responds. "No problem."

M-C pauses for a moment as though she's going to say something else, but instead she turns without a word. Rapunzel very badly wants to ask Cassandra to stay, but she can't think of any plausible reason to request it, so she says nothing as M-C leaves Rapunzel's room through the balcony window.

Rapunzel realizes a minute after she'd left that she never asked where M-C had gone that morning.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Third Week

"Just try to keep up," Cassandra calls back to her, and Fidella takes off into a gallop.

"Oh please," Rapunzel answers, and without even directing him, Max bolts after them. Rapunzel leans forward as she balances in the saddle, and she pats Max's neck. "Don't worry buddy, we've got this. Keep following them until we can see the town, alright? Then we'll pass them."

Max winnies approvingly, and they chase after Cassandra and Fidella. Cassandra glances back at them with a smirk, her black curls whipping across her face, and Fidella suddenly takes a hard turn into the woods by the road. Max snorts in surprise and he overshoots the turn, his hooves scrambling to change directions.

"What the-" Rapunzel starts, and she can hear Cassandra calling back from the trees: "Shortcut!"

"What do we think Max, do we believe her?" Rapunzel asks, but Max has already made up his mind as he takes off into the woods.

He weaves through the trees, letting Rapunzel make judgements on the quickest path through the undergrowth. Rapunzel listens closely for the sound of hoofbeats ahead, and she catches sight of Cassandra and Fidella again.

"We've got them, Max," Rapunzel says excitedly.

They continue their chase, but Rapunzel soon loses sight of their competition. The woods end suddenly, the landscape shifting to an open expanse of rolling fields, with a stream near the forest's edge and the town a short distance away from it. They slow to a stop, looking around.

"Well, well, well, look who finally decided to show up," Cassandra's smooth and cocky voice comes from across the stream, where she's reclining against a large rock with a half-eaten apple while Fidella drinks from the water. Cassandra raises an eyebrow and the Moonstone glints from where it's set in her chest, barely above the neckline of her usual tunic without its undershirt.

"Nuh-uh. No way. You were twenty seconds ahead of us at most. There is no way you've been sitting here long enough to eat most of that apple. This is staged," Rapunzel answers her taunt, dismounting.

"Hmm, accusing me of staging? Sounds like something a sore loser would say," Cassandra returns, taking another bite of the apple.

"Fidella, she had you bite off half the apple, didn't she?" Rapunzel asks.

Max whinnies questioningly at Fidella as they step across the stream, and Fidella raises her head to spray water at him from her lips playfully in response.

Cassandra rises from her leisurely lounge and walks over to Rapunzel. "Well, I won so I think that means that you-" she pokes Rapunzel on the shoulder, "owe me a pastry."

"I'm not sure this one counts considering you knew the way ahead of time and I didn't," Rapunzel answers, smiling despite herself.

"Sorry, Raps. Rules are rules, and we did call this a race," Cassandra tells her with a sigh of faux-regret, like there was nothing they could do. She looks at Rapunzel and smirks. "Now let's go to the bakery. I'm hungry."

"I thought you just ate half an apple," Rapunzel responds teasingly, raising an eyebrow.

"Winning makes me hungry," Cassandra says with a dismissive wave of her hand. It was her right hand, ungloved and unblemished. "Max, do you want the rest?"

Max nods excitedly, and she tosses the apple over. Glancing back at Rapunzel, she snorts a small laugh. She reaches towards Rapunzel's hair and pulls out a leaf, saying, "Raps, you know you're supposed to dodge the trees, right?"

Rapunzel's heart skips a beat at Cassandra's laugh, and when Cassandra reaches her hand up near her face. "It's called accessorizing, Cass," Rapunzel replies, thinking quickly to keep up with her banter. "But I wouldn't expect you to know anything about fashion."

"Yeah? Then I'll just leave this in your hair for going into town. So you can, y'know, stay fashionable."

"Well, I wouldn't want to cause a stir debuting new styles from the city," Rapunzel sighs. "So I suppose I can leave it out of my outfit."

Cassandra laughs again. "Whatever you say," she responds. "Now c'mon." She grabs Rapunzel's hand to pull her along towards a footpath leading to the town.

Rapunzel feels her magic flare at the skin contact, her hair glowing gold immediately and her heart starting to race. She follows Cassandra, whose hair had begun to glow blue, and Cassandra looks back at Rapunzel and smiles-

Rapunzel wakes with a pounding heart, and her hair is lit up and suspended in the air. She gasps and sits up, and it falls to the ground around her.

She holds a strand up, confused. The last time her hair had acted out in her sleep was shortly after it had grown back, when she was having dreams about the black rocks.

She leans backwards onto her bed again and rubs her eyes. The memory of the dream is already fading, but she wishes desperately that she would be able to remember it. She didn't know when it was or where it was but she knew that she was with Cassandra, and they were happy.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel's network of notes is starting to look like a lunatic's.

She has her original pages of notes - her thoughts written out in a stream without any editing. From there she wrote more pages in sections: what she knows about Cassandra, what she knows about the Moonstone, things Cassandra is angry about, evidence that Cassandra cares about her (?), things Cassandra wants (??), ways the Moonstone has affected Cassandra, and questions she still has.

The last section being the longest, and with the most underlining and exclamation points.

Rapunzel sits on the floor in front of all her papers. A lot had happened since she last deep dived into her notes, the morning she gave Cassandra the gift painting over a week ago. Since then she'd learned that

• Cassandra's mind/memory is in pieces;
• She can lose her grasp on the pieces when made too agitated;
• She likely clawed at all the mirrors in the castle when her mind was destabilized;
• She breaks the castle when destabilized;
• She can recover with time;
• She reassembles parts of the castle herself, by hand, using black rock;
• She's been friendly as she's regained her mind;
• She accepted numerous gifts from Rapunzel - the friendship bracelet, the journal, the art supplies, and the satchel - and she's kept these on her;
• She seems to be seeking Rapunzel out for company with some regularity;
• She left the city the day before to "check something";
• She says she doesn't sleep or eat;
• She doesn't have a room that she's staying in (as far as she currently remembers);
• If there is food in the castle, neither of them know where it is; and
• She accepted Rapunzel's request for food to be brought in for her from her friends.

It's a lot. Rapunzel chews at her lip, thinking the situation over. Obviously her goal is still to repair her friendship with Cassandra, retrieve the Moonstone from her, and get Corona back. And of course she still can't do the first step, much less the other two, without Cassandra's mind being more restored. Especially when Cassandra didn't respond at all when Rapunzel asked about handing over the Moonstone a couple days ago, even when she (presumably) didn't (doesn't?) remember its significance.

Rapunzel rubs her temples. While Cassandra's mind being restored would certainly be a good thing, Rapunzel worries about the anger that had been put aside with Cassandra's loss of memories. If she remembers more of her relationship with Rapunzel, will she become enraged again? Would she destroy the bracelet and journal Rapunzel gave her? Would Rapunzel be able to get through to her?

Rapunzel frowns. She can't answer those questions now - but she feels cautiously optimistic considering Cassandra's somewhat-positive response to Rapunzel explaining the gift painting before her mind broke.

Rapunzel takes a deep breath. All she can do is what she's been doing - keep working in the city trying to clean it up and fix people's homes, and whenever she encounters Cassandra, try to help her remember things. Unable to guarantee an interaction with Cassandra, she decides she'll go into the city later in the morning.

But for now, she pulls out another paper to write a letter to her friends.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel doesn't encounter M-C that day, but the day after, she wakes to find M-C pacing on her balcony.

"Cass…?" Rapunzel mumbles, half-asleep. She pulls herself out of her bed and puts a jacket over her nightgown to open the window and speak to her.

"Rapunzel," M-C says urgently upon seeing her. "Finally. Where is the journal?"

"The… huh?" Rapunzel says, still half-asleep. She sees that M-C still has her satchel, so she feels confused. "Did you lose yours?" Or is she talking about Rapunzel's?

"What?" M-C asks, confused. "No, Rapunzel. The journal of Herz Der Sonne. I can't find it - it's not in the vault. You have it, don't you? You're keeping it safe?"

Rapunzel shakes her head, trying to clear the sleep from her mind. "The… oh." Oh no.

M-C frowns, and Rapunzel realizes she must have looked alarmed. "What is it?" M-C asks.

"It's… ah," Rapunzel starts. It's in pulpy pieces somewhere off the coast. "Why are you looking for it?"

"That stupid holiday is coming up," M-C says, her expression becoming disdainful. "But it's important, and it's my job to keep the book safe so it can be displayed. I barely get any jobs from my dad as is, so I need to do this one well. The last thing we need is some lunatic Separatists making off with it. But I can't find it," M-C looks at Rapunzel intently. "You have it, right? You're… into all that lovey-dovey stuff. You took it for some reason."

"Mmmmmyep," Rapunzel says, giving her what she hopes is a convincing smile. "Yes I… am into all that lovey-dovey stuff. Mhmm. And the journal is… ah…"

Rapunzel has no idea what to say. If she lies to Cassandra, there's the chance of Cassandra finding out, and she'll be angry. But if she tells the truth, she might make Cassandra confused… and she'll be angry. It seems like Cassandra is caught on a memory from the past - the Day of Hearts isn't for months, and, well, it probably won't be happening here in Underworld. And present-day Cassandra likely doesn't care about any jobs her father would want her to do.

Honesty is probably Rapunzel's best option. Maybe Cassandra will be so thrown by being torn back to present-day, she won't be mad about the book getting destroyed.

Rapunzel sighs. "The truth is, Cass," she starts. "Herz Der Sonne's diary is gone. King Trevor tried to kidnap my mom to be his bride - long story - and then there was a sea serpent - longer story - and it got thrown into the ocean. I made a new Book of Hearts that we started using last year."

M-C's expression is unreadable as she studies Rapunzel's face. A silence stretches between them, and Rapunzel wonders if she should tell Cassandra to look around her, to try to pull her mind back to the present.

"What?" M-C finally says, squinting slightly.

"Um, maybe it would help if I told you the full story. You can come in, if you want," Rapunzel tells her, opening the window wider and leaning back to allow her entry.

M-C gives her a dubious look, but she climbs into Rapunzel's room.

"This happened last winter," Rapunzel begins, and she tells M-C the story of how Herz Der Sonne's diary got destroyed. She elects to skip the, "my parents' memories were erased during a Saporian overthrow of Corona" background, as she thinks it would be a little much to lay on Cassandra all at once.

"So that's why I made a new one, which is probably still in the vault, but you didn't recognize it," Rapunzel tells her. "And none of this was your fault, obviously, since you weren't here." If you were here, it probably wouldn't have happened at all, Rapunzel thinks. Not for the first time Rapunzel feels regret that Corona's most reliable and skilled not-guard wasn't around for everything that happened after the Dark Kingdom.

M-C sits in silence, staring towards the ground in front of her. Rapunzel takes a deep breath, thinking that it would likely be at least an hour before she gets any movement or words from Cassandra. So Rapunzel goes over to her supplies and pulls out breakfast materials for herself.

And for M-C. Rapunzel wonders if Cassandra had remembered where she was keeping her food yet. Until then, she'll make extra of her meals for her whenever she's around.

Only ten minutes have passed when M-C moves, putting her hand to her satchel and pulling out her journal and the quill. Rapunzel looks at her in surprise as M-C starts scribbling something down into her book. Rapunzel doesn't say anything to interrupt her, recognizing that this must be part of her processing, but she desperately wonders at what Cassandra's writing.

M-C snaps the book shut and stands in one motion. She starts walking for Rapunzel's door, and Rapunzel scrambles up to cut her off. "Wait, Cass," she starts. "Do- do you want to have breakfast with me?"

M-C's eyebrows draw together. "Ah…" she starts awkwardly, and Rapunzel feels excited that Cassandra's speaking. "I don't do that, sorry."

"You don't have breakfast?" Rapunzel asks, although she already knows the answer.

M-C shuffles her feet. "That's right. I think we've talked about this before..."

Rapunzel holds herself back from grabbing M-C's arm and pulling her back towards the hearth in an attempt to prevent her from fleeing. "You don't… feel hungry at all?" She still refuses to believe Cassandra just doesn't eat.

M-C starts moving past Rapunzel. "Nope," she answers.

"Like, at all," Rapunzel presses, stepping in her way again.

M-C moves around Rapunzel's other side. "Nope," she repeats.

"Cass, I…" Rapunzel starts, turning but not getting into her way again. "I'm sorry for pressuring you. I just worry about you," she says honestly.

"I'm fine, Rapunzel, really," M-C tells her, backing towards the door. "I appreciate the concern, but don't worry about me, okay?"

That will literally never happen, Rapunzel thinks. Especially when you're so messed up and there's a you-induced wasteland surrounding us. Out loud she says, "I'll try. But I do like seeing you, Cass. I think it would be nice for us to spend more time together."

"Uh," M-C starts, her hand on the door handle. "Yeah. I think that'd be nice too."

Rapunzel beams in excitement, but M-C quickly opens the door and darts out before Rapunzel can say anything.

The smile falls from Rapunzel's face. "Okay," she says. "I guess I'll see you later, then."

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Despite M-C's assurance, Rapunzel doesn't see her for the rest of the day, nor the day after. Rapunzel keeps at her clean-up work in the city to occupy her time, and the next morning coming down from her room she finally sees M-C.

She feels excitement run through her. "Hey, Cass!"

M-C, looking out one of the large windows lining the hallway, starts at Rapunzel's voice and turns quickly towards her. As Rapunzel approaches, M-C has an uncertain expression, gripping the strap of her satchel with both hands.

Shy Cass, Rapunzel thinks. Rapunzel smiles at her. "It's nice to see yo-"

"Here," M-C says abruptly, throwing a hand out in front of Rapunzel. Rapunzel looks down, surprised, and sees a familiar shape resting in her gauntleted palm.

It was her hairpin shaped like a bird in flight, which she wore frequently during their journey to the Dark Kingdom. Rapunzel feels confused looking at it - she had left it in a jewelry box in her vanity when she stopped wearing it upon returning to Corona (due to too many complicated memories associated with it). Cassandra went through her things?

"Uh, Cass, what-" Rapunzel starts, but M-C cuts her off.

"I-I saw you lost yours. So here," M-C tells her. "You really liked it, so I thought you'd be sad…"

Rapunzel looks from M-C's face back to the hairpin in her hand. She slowly picks it up and notices that it wasn't painted wood like her real clip - this one was carved from a stone, some kind of crystal, pastel pink with opaque white veins under the surface.

Rapunzel doesn't know what to say. It's beautiful and perfectly carved, like the crystal flowers in the cosmic garden. "You- you made this for me?"

M-C pulls her hand back and nods.

Rapunzel's so moved by the gesture she chooses not to tell M-C that her original hairpin isn't missing. "Thank you, Cass," she says. "It's beautiful."

"Do-" M-C cuts herself off, but then continues: "Do you want to put it on?"

"Oh, um, yeah," Rapunzel answers. She would use the hairpin to anchor a plait over the top of her head, so she pulls her hair down from its main braid. Realizing she'll need both hands to weave her hair, she holds the hairpin out to M-C. "Could you hold this for me?"

M-C nods and takes it, and Rapunzel takes three locks of her hair and quickly braids them with the precision of someone who spends a truly absurd amount of time braiding hair. Holding the plait, Rapunzel looks to M-C to reach out and take the hairpin, but M-C leans forward and puts it in place herself.

Rapunzel freezes at M-C's hand being right by her face and feeling her armored fingers brush her hair, vaguely remembering the dream she had a couple nights before. M-C sees her tense, and she pulls her hand back quickly. "Sorry…" M-C murmurs, looking away.

"No, it's fine. Really," Rapunzel assures her quickly, realizing that M-C probably thought she had tensed from fear. In truth, she wanted to take Cassandra's hand, pull off the gauntlet, and hold it, but she thinks that's still a little out of their range currently. "Thank you, Cass. It means a lot to me, that you would make this for me."

M-C nods, still refusing to look at Rapunzel. After a moment's pause where she looks like she's about to say something more, she steps back quickly saying, "Well, bye." The black rock under her feet glows blue for a moment before opening to make a rift directly under her, and she drops into the room below.

Rapunzel steps towards the rift stuttering, "W-wait," but it seals immediately.

Chapter Text

"Oh my gosh, it's beautiful," Rapunzel gasps, staring up at the lights. "I mean, I knew it would be, but wow. No- no book could ever describe this. Look at how it dances!"

Cassandra chuckles next to her, leaning against the ship's railing. "I thought you'd like it," she says, turning her gaze from the sky to smile at Rapunzel.

Rapunzel somehow manages to tear her eyes from the aurora borealis to smile back at her. Despite the cold, Cassandra isn't wearing the same kind of fur-lined coat Rapunzel has on. She's in just her usual trousers and tunic, and from Rapunzel's angle looking at her, she's able to see the Moonstone on Cassandra's chest just barely catching the green and teal light of the aurora.

"What is it?" Rapunzel asks, looking back up. "None of the books I read had an explanation, just myths. Is it magic?"

Cassandra looks back upwards as well. "It's- hm."

"Let me guess," Rapunzel says wryly. "You know, but you don't know how to explain."

Cassandra laughs sheepishly. "Well, yeah. There's some… I guess, sciencey stuff to it. I don't really have the words, I'm not sure anyone does. I'll ask Varian. But I can tell you that at the very beginning, it comes from the sun."

"Really? Even though it's nighttime, it comes from the sun?" Rapunzel asks, surprised.

"Mhm. Most beautiful things do."

Rapunzel smiles and shuffles closer to Cassandra, inclining her head to rest on Cassandra's shoulder while looking up at the sky. Cassandra tilts her head to rest on Rapunzel's, and her cheek brushes Rapunzel's forehead.

Rapunzel's magic flares immediately at the touch, and she feels it rush through her veins as her heartbeat quickens. Out of the corner of her eye she can see strands of her hair start to glow gold and the stone in Cassandra's chest start to glow blue-

Rapunzel awakes with her heart pounding, and the shining hair suspended in the air around her bed abruptly falls to the ground.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Later that day, Rapunzel hears a voice in another room while she's walking towards the courtyard. She can't make out the words, but she's sure it's Cassandra speaking from the pitch of the voice. Rapunzel can't think of why Cassandra would be speaking - there's no one in Underworld except the two of them. Right?

Rapunzel darts through the halls, trying to find where the voice is coming from, but she's unsuccessful. She even calls for Cassandra, giving up on her sneaking, but she gets no response.

She doesn't encounter M-C the rest of the day. The next morning while she's walking through the castle to find a place she'd like to read, however, she finds M-C removing black rock spikes from where they had damaged a wall.

"Cass! Hi!" Rapunzel cries enthusiastically. Since she usually only sees Cassandra once a day at most, sometimes not at all, any time Rapunzel sees her she feels like she's won a prize. At least, that's what it feels like now that Cassandra's not angry with Rapunzel, of course.

M-C looks up from the wall that she's studying, her face expressionless. Rapunzel's excited to see that she still has the bracelet and satchel on her, and it seems like she's rebuilding part of the castle. This could be an opportunity to spend a bunch of time with Cassandra and have some real conversations! And she can see I'm wearing the hairpin she gave me…

Rapunzel stops in front of her. "Good morning," she says cheerfully. "Are you fixing the wall?"

M-C glances at it and nods. Rapunzel beams at her. "That's great! Can I work on it with you like we did before?"

M-C hesitates, but she nods again. Rapunzel feels excitement run through her, but looking at the broken wall and debris under it, she doesn't see any distinct feature that could focus on to help her arrange the pieces. "Oh, um, Cass, how do you sort the stones? So I can help you."

M-C looks at the rubble. "I make different piles for the different spots they go, like how high up," she answers.

As Rapunzel suspected - but... "How do you know where the rocks go just by looking at them?"

"Because... that's where they go," M-C tells her blankly, like Rapunzel had just asked an exceedingly simple question.

"Uh," Rapunzel starts. "Okay. I can't really tell where they go by looking at them like you can..." internally Rapunzel panics. How is she supposed to help?

"Oh..." M-C responds. "Well..." She looks uncomfortable for a moment, and bends down to pick up a stone. "The wall... is painted pink," she notes slowly, standing again. "But my rocks I hold it together with... aren't pink... so you could... paint it... so it matches?"

Rapunzel stares wide-eyed at her. Cassandra didn't only accept her help, she came up with a way for Rapunzel to help, in a way she knew that Rapunzel could help. She's not just tolerating Rapunzel - she's welcoming her.

Rapunzel chokes down an excited squee before she answers, "Yes! Yes, I can do that! I just need to get my paints... you'll still be here when I come back, right? In like, five minutes? You won't leave?"

M-C blinks. "Uh, no, I'll still... be here," she answers.

"Do you promise?" Rapunzel asks intensely, leaning towards her. She can't afford to lose another day of building back her relationship with Cassandra. Having to spend so much time waiting has been driving Rapunzel insane.

"Uhh... sure," M-C answers her. "I promise."

"Okay..." Rapunzel says carefully, leaning back. "I hope you mean it, because promises-"

"-Are very important to you," M-C finishes for her. "Right. I won't leave."

Rapunzel gasps, delighted at her memory. "Yes! Okay, I'll be right back."

Rapunzel runs down the hallway back towards her room. Before rounding a corner, she stops and looks behind her to make sure M-C is still there, and she is - she has knelt down to start sorting stones.

Rapunzel's heart soars. With the adrenaline in her system, she takes off towards her room.

M-C is still there when Rapunzel returns with her paints, and in that short time she's built back some of the wall, although the rubble isn't fully organized beforehand the way she'd done last time.

"Hey Cass!" Rapunzel calls, and she bounces over. "Oh wow, you've already got some of it back together."

"Uh, yeah," M-C says. "You wouldn't be able to paint until some of the wall was up, so I built some first."

That's so… thoughtful, Rapunzel thinks, and it takes all of her willpower not to hug M-C in her excitement about how well M-C had been doing that morning. "Then I'll start mixing my paints!"

M-C nods, and Rapunzel sits on the ground to start formulating the same hue of pink in front of her. M-C continues organizing her rocks, and Rapunzel lets a couple minutes pass in companionable silence before she speaks.

"Sooo Cass," Rapunzel starts, keeping her eyes on her paints. "I thought I heard you talking yesterday. Was there someone with you?"

"Oh," M-C responds. "Yeah, I was talking to Owl."

Rapunzel can't keep herself from an excited gasp. "Owl's here?"

M-C nods and Rapunzel beams at her. "Where? Can I see him?"

"Uh… He's around… I could call him, but I'd like to finish this wall first…" M-C answers slowly, rubbing the back of her neck anxiously.

"Right, yes, of course," Rapunzel answers, and she redoubles her efforts on paint mixing. She would've been happy to see any creature, but the thought of seeing a friend like Owl, who could also help Cassandra's recovery, fills her with elation.

M-C is just as quick in her organizing and assembling this time as she was last time. As she places the stones, Rapunzel is ready shortly after to spread paint on the hardened black rock. Rapunzel tries a couple times to start other conversations - asking what she's been up to, if she's eaten anything, what she's been putting in her journal - but M-C is not responsive to her questioning. Rapunzel gives up, not wanting to alienate Cassandra before she has the chance to see Owl again.

Maybe I could plan with him ways to help Cassandra get better… Rapunzel ponders. Or he could keep tabs on where Cassandra is, at least, so I won't have to worry about spending hours tracking her down anymore… I can't wait to see him. Finally I'll have someone else with me who can understand how crazy this all is.

Shortly after, with Rapunzel's last brushstroke, the wall is restored. She steps back to assess it with M-C, who carefully studies every part of it. Rapunzel feels like they had done a wonderful job - the slight indent of the black rock mortar is barely visible under the paint, and probably could only be spotted by someone looking for it.

"It looks great, don't you think?" Rapunzel asks, looking over at M-C with a smile.

M-C, with her intent gaze still on the wall, nods slightly. Without further ado, she turns and begins walking down the hallway.

"Oh, wait, Cass," Rapunzel says quickly, darting over to her. "You said you'd call Owl after we finished, remember? I'd love to see him."

M-C glances at Rapunzel. "Oh. Right," she answers blankly. She walks over to one of the windows lining the hallway and undoes the latch to push it open. Raising her hand to her lips she lets out a sharp whistle, and Rapunzel feels delighted at the familiar motion and sound. They wait a few seconds and M-C lifts her arm as a bird flies through the open window, and Rapunzel almost chokes at the sight.

A black-rock copy of Owl lands on M-C's forearm.

"Th-that's not Owl," Rapunzel stutters, overcome by her shock. The copy swivels its head around to look at her, its lifeless blue eyes staring into her, and M-C looks up to watch Rapunzel as well. They stand there motionless, and Rapunzel abruptly remembers the night she first met Owl, sneaking through the streets of Corona with Cassandra.

They stood looking at her then, too, with Owl perched on her arm the same way. The harsh contrast between the cherished memory of their night beyond the walls and their current terrible reality with Cassandra so broken, holding a lifeless imitation of her dear friend, gives Rapunzel a sharp stab of grief and tears prick at her eyes.

"That's- it's a copy, Cass," Rapunzel tries to tell her again, her voice shaking. "That's not really Owl. You- you understand that, right?"

M-C doesn't answer. They continue to stare at her, and the uncanny approximation of who Cassandra used to be fills Rapunzel with fear she doesn't understand.

Rapunzel swallows hard and steels herself. She'd made too much progress with Cassandra today not to try to keep getting through to her. "It's- it's made of black rock," Rapunzel tries to explain again. "This is a… a copy of Owl that you dreamed up. A-and that's good!" Rapunzel tells her, trying to lighten her voice. "It's good that you remember Owl, and you still love him, but this… this isn't him. You have to understand that."

Finally M-C reacts. Her eyebrows draw together as she responds, "This is Owl."

"It's not, Cass," Rapunzel tells her firmly. "Y-you're confused again. You think that we're in some other time, when you had Owl with you, so you made a copy. But Owl isn't actually here."

M-C looks at the specter on her arm in silence. Rapunzel waits expectantly for her to realize the truth, like the other instances she'd been shaken out of her memories of being in a different time. Rapunzel wonders how long it will take her, hoping that she'll send the unsettling copy away as soon as possible.

But it's only a few moments later that the copy of Owl disintegrates into shards of black rock in the shape of feathers and talons and clockwork.

The pieces fall from her arm and hit the ground with sharp rings like shattered glass. M-C looks down without expression at the pile of broken pieces.

Rapunzel doesn't know how to react. She didn't expect it to physically fall apart like that. Somehow seeing Cassandra without the copy, staring at its pieces, is even worse than seeing her with the copy.

"Cass…" Rapunzel starts, and M-C lowers her arm as she kneels down to the pile. She picks up one of the black rock feathers and stares at it.

"...He's not here," M-C says without moving.

Rapunzel feels her heart start to break in her chest. "No, I…" Rapunzel swallows again. "I don't think so. I- I'm sorry, Cass."

M-C stands again, still holding the feather. Rapunzel sees her eyes start to shine before she turns away and starts slowly walking down the hallway again.

Rapunzel tries to suppress her grief at M-C's reaction and steps forward to follow her. She doesn't have any plan and has nothing to say, but she feels like she has to do something to comfort her.

"I want to be alone," M-C says without looking back, hearing Rapunzel's movement.

Rapunzel pauses, surprised. "B-but Cass," Rapunzel starts, "It's- I think it would be better if-"

"I want to be alone," M-C repeats, continuing down the hallway.

Rapunzel wavers, but she can't bear the thought of Cassandra being alone when she's in such distress. Rapunzel starts walking towards M-C again, saying, "I- I want to help y-"

Her words are cut off as glowing blue rock emerges from the ground behind M-C, raising a wall that blocks the entire hallway. The stone fades to black in front of Rapunzel.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

A few days pass and much to Rapunzel's distress, she doesn't see Cassandra at all. The wall blocking the hallway is gone the next day, as is the pile of black rock shards that used to be the copy of Owl. But Rapunzel neither hears nor sees Cassandra for the longest stretch of time she's experienced in Underworld yet.

Rapunzel feels miserable thinking that she'd driven Cassandra away by taking the Owl copy from her, and she drives herself half mad trying to figure out if she'd done the right thing.

She finally decides that she must have. It wouldn't have been healthy to let Cassandra continue living in a false reality. She just hopes that Cassandra doesn't blame her.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Fourth Week

One morning during her fourth week in Underworld, Rapunzel wakes to find the castle filled with spikes.

That is, more spikes than usual. Considerably more spikes. All the black rock corridors and rooms have filled with them, shot out of the ground, walls, and ceiling, to the point that Rapunzel can barely navigate through some of them. The sections of original castle have many more spikes as well, black rock creeping out from the ones that remained from M-C's original rampage to cover more surface area, with more spikes shot out of those bases.

Rapunzel is confused and alarmed by the development. Nothing like this had ever happened before. It seemed like there wasn't further damage to the castle - the interior was just filled with spikes. She wanders the castle, calling for Cassandra, desperate to find out what happened.

She gets no response, but she sees a spike shoot from black rock down a hallway from where she's standing, so she heads quickly in that direction. M-C isn't there but Rapunzel notices that the density of spike clusters is higher in some directions than others, so she continues in the direction of the most spikes. She assumes that they would be originating from closest to Cassandra - Rapunzel could be completely wrong, but it's all she has to work with. The spikes lead her deeper into the castle, and after passing narrowly through an unfamiliar corridor of black rock, she finds herself in a part of the castle only slightly more familiar to her: the servants' wing.

Rapunzel navigates past bedrooms for the castle staff. Cassandra's room is in this wing as well, but in another hallway a floor up with the other higher-ranked servants' quarters, like Old Lady Crowley - who directs all the maids - and Friedborg - Rapunzel's mother's lady-in-waiting. Rapunzel follows the hallway towards the large room where the seamstresses would work and the maids would do laundry for the castle.

She gets to the open doorway of the half-collapsed room, and it's so filled with spikes she can barely see through to the other side. Rapunzel ducks under and slips between a few spikes, and she sees M-C's back as she crouches on the floor near the center of the room. In Underworld's eerie silence, Rapunzel can hear M-C's harsh breathing.

"Cass?" Rapunzel asks anxiously. "Are you oka-"

M-C's head snaps up at Rapunzel's voice. "Get out," she snarls, and Rapunzel jumps at the sound of more spikes erupting from the walls and floor in the room. These ones didn't emerge harmlessly from a base of black rock - they burst through the stone of the castle. Rapunzel feels fear, both from M-C's aggression and the damage to the already-compromised room.

Rapunzel steels herself and steps towards M-C. "It's me, Cass. It's Rapunzel. I want to help y-"

"Leave it!" M-C still refuses to rise, nor turn to face Rapunzel. A couple more spikes shooting into the room punctuate M-C's words.

"No!" Rapunzel yells in response. "There's something wrong, I'm not going to leave you alone!"

"I said get out!" M-C roars as she stands, turning aggressively towards Rapunzel, raising her left arm to summon spikes that erupt from the ground rapidly moving towards Rapunzel.

Rapunzel throws herself to the side to dodge the spikes. M-C's slightly hunched over, still breathing hard, her face twisted with rage. Rapunzel sees her right arm bent at the elbow to press against her chest.

"Cass, please," Rapunzel pleads with her. "I know you don't like accepting help but please, at least tell me what's happening." Knowing Cassandra already has problems with her mood and memory, Rapunzel can hardly imagine what new trouble plagues her mind. Or is this a new manifestation of one of those first two problems?

While Rapunzel speaks, M-C winces with a sharp intake of breath, and Rapunzel hears another spike shoot out from the hallway behind her. She watches as M-C's jaw flexes, and M-C hunches farther as she brings her left arm to her chest to cross over her right one. She doesn't respond to what Rapunzel said.

Realization hits Rapunzel abruptly. "You're in pain." It was an obvious conclusion, but she stares at M-C with wide eyes. "It's your arm. You're in pain."

M-C takes no notice of Rapunzel's words. She seems to be trying to control her breathing.

"What happened? Why is it hurting?" Rapunzel feels distress. She had hoped the hand would be healed by now. "Did you do something?"

M-C's face shifts with rage. It seems she could finally register Rapunzel's words. "I said- GET- OUT"

Spikes start shooting out from everywhere. Rapunzel feels terror, reminded of how her tower's stairwell filled with spikes when she and her friends tried to flee from it. There is no way for Rapunzel to stay in the room, and in her rush to duck out towards the door, she knocks the side of her head on one of the already-present spikes. Putting a hand to her injury and trying to shake off dizziness, Rapunzel runs from the onslaught. The spikes shoot out from the stone and chase Rapunzel back down the servants' quarters corridor.

Rapunzel hoped the spikes would stop once she had been driven far enough away from Cassandra, but they don't. At a conjuncture of hallways, Rapunzel can't even choose a direction as more spikes appear down one of her options. She's herded in this manner until she reaches a doorway that opens from the servant's wing to the castle courtyard.

Rapunzel gasps for breath once she's outside. She turns and keeps backing away from the doorway, even as the spikes cease at the threshold. Finally, in the center of the courtyard, Rapunzel allows herself to stop. She sinks to her knees, looking up at the castle in front of her.

Rapunzel winces as her heart rate slows, feeling a throbbing in her head where she had smacked it. She feels anger fill her.

"What the heck, Cass?!" She shouts at the castle, fully aware Cassandra wouldn't be able to hear her from all the way out there. "I just wanted to help you!"

Rapunzel scowls at the ground in front of her and rubs her head. I guess that answers my question about whether she'd be angry again when she got enough memories back. Rapunzel thinks. And my question about whether she's still mad at me for the hand thing. Jerk.

Rapunzel tries to make herself think more pragmatically, even while her head throbs and she's filled with frustration. She figures Cassandra's finally remembered the Great Tree and she's still mad about the hand, so she probably doesn't want Rapunzel anywhere near her until the pain dies down. But what caused the pain in the first place? It's been almost a year since she got hurt. And Rapunzel hadn't seen any sign of Cassandra being in pain from it before.

"She must have hurt it jumping around the castle," Rapunzel mutters. "And now she's mad at me about it."

Rapunzel scowls again. She's stuck outside with her head hurting and she hasn't even eaten breakfast. Depending on how long it takes for Cassandra's pain to die down, she could be kept outside and away from her food supply for a while.

"We had been doing so well, too," Rapunzel mutters. "And now this again, when we resolved it already."

Rapunzel pulls herself to her feet. She decides she'd be better off getting away from the castle while waiting for Cassandra to cool off.

Walking through the capital, Rapunzel tries to think through ways to get through to Cassandra if she doesn't end up cooling off. Rapunzel thinks about the apology that she'd written out in her journal - the one she was going to use when she offered Cassandra the gift painting - and wonders if it could work now.

Of course, I couldn't tell her that apology in the first place because she was so mean to me, Rapunzel thinks, scowling. I'm sick of this. I try so hard over and over and over again to make things right and help her, and all she does is get angry and mean.

Rapunzel feels frustration building in her that she hadn't felt since Cassandra threw away the painting. She's almost embarrassed at the strength of it. She knows now that Cassandra is completely unstable and has trouble with her mind, so Rapunzel feels badly about getting so angry with her. But it's hard not to feel frustrated when they had been doing so comparatively well up until this point.

But why am I getting so mad about this in particular? Rapunzel wonders. I already knew that I'd been a bad friend to Cass. And with her being so forgetful, it makes sense I'll have to apologize for things a lot. So why am I so opposed to the thought of apologizing again now?

Rapunzel scowls again as the answer comes to her. Because this time it wasn't my fault. I can understand how I made her feel unappreciated when I was stressed during the journey, and I can even admit that since we're so different, sometimes I've come across as condescending, somehow. But if I try to apologize about this, then she'll think that it was my fault, and it wasn't. She was the one who said she'd get over it.

Rapunzel takes a deep breath through her nose. But obviously Cassandra does think it's my fault. So… I know it's not… but what if it was?

Nothing could have prepared Rapunzel for the sheer amount of guilt that floods her mind at the thought of being responsible for what happened. She'd been so stubborn about her stance that she hadn't thought about this possibility for even a moment before.

She stops in her tracks she's so overcome by it, and unwilling tears prick her eyes. She remembers Cassandra's cry, her look of horror, the way her arm blackened under the spell's fire. She remembers how Cassandra held it tightly to her chest after it happened, grimacing in pain. She remembers Cassandra's frustration the weeks after while she tried to train, unable to do even basic techniques with her sword. If it was her fault that Cassandra had been so hurt…

Rapunzel hadn't even been willing to consider that it could've been both of their faults. Even if it's both of our faults, that's awful, Rapunzel thinks to herself, rubbing at her eyes. Because Cassandra got hurt, not me. I… I got away fine. No consequences. But Cassandra had to retrain her hand for weeks… and it must still be hurt, even over a year later. I don't even know exactly what the extent of the damage was.

Rapunzel feels another flare of frustration and grits her teeth. Because she refused to talk to me! I was the one who wanted so badly to talk it through, but she kept refusing, over and over again. And when we finally did talk, she lied. All she said was that she was mad that I didn't listen to her about the spear, and that she'd get over it. She could have told me more, or tried to explain how she felt it was my fault too. But she didn't. I gave her ample space to talk to me, she's in the wrong for refusing to work with me.

Rapunzel scowls. And now I'm supposed to apologize to her when she couldn't even do the bare minimum? Friendship is a two way street. And I'm still not at fault here, even partially. She should have trusted me to have it handled. Her using the spear wouldn't have been fast enough and our friends were in danger. I didn't have a choice and she's ridiculous for blaming me.

Angry again, Rapunzel continues her walk through the streets, fuming and with her head hurting. She has no more productive thoughts.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

A couple hours later, Rapunzel is forced to return to the castle from hunger. She figures if it's still filled with spikes, she'll just sneak in. She can deal with Cassandra after she's eaten.

She can't tell from the outside how the interior looks, so she enters the ruins of the front entry hall to look around.

M-C is standing in the middle of it, and Rapunzel starts upon seeing her. Rapunzel didn't think she'd see Cassandra again for hours, if not days. She still has no idea what she's going to say, and she intended on spending more time thinking about it after eating once her mood improved.

Rapunzel stays still, wondering if Cassandra's going to attack her with spikes again, but M-C doesn't move. They stare at each other in tense silence for a few moments, with M-C's expression unreadable. Rapunzel is nervous of this emotionless Cass, knowing she could explode into anger at any moment. But Rapunzel decides that she shouldn't let Cassandra intimidate her, and she continues into the hall to make her way to her room.

M-C moves into her way when she tries to walk past her towards the doorway. Rapunzel steps back, surprised, and tries to walk around - but M-C moves into her way again, still watching her with that unreadable expression.

Rapunzel feels a flare of anger. "What's the deal, Cass?" She asks snappishly.

M-C frowns, looking vaguely uncertain. Microexpressions flit across her face too quickly for Rapunzel to follow, and all Rapunzel picks up is that M-C might be tending towards her shy mood. Is she going to apologize? Rapunzel wonders, surprised at the thought.

"...I'm mad at you," M-C says finally, back on that vaguely uncertain expression.

No duh, Rapunzel thinks, but she suppresses the rude thought to say something nicer. "I figured that out when you tried to impale me on spikes and drove me out of the castle," Rapunzel answers. Okay, maybe that wasn't any nicer.

M-C frowns. "Yes."

"...Is that it? 'Yes'?" Rapunzel asks in disbelief. "You're not going to even try to apologize?"

M-C's eyes narrow. "Why would I do that?"

Rapunzel stares at her. "Because you tried to impale me on spikes and drove me out of the castle!"

M-C glares back. "I told you to go away and you didn't."

"You-!" Rapunzel stops herself. "Listen, Cass, I'm in a really bad mood and I don't want to talk about this right now, okay? I'm hungry, and my head hurts. I just want to go up to my room to eat something."

M-C doesn't answer, so Rapunzel tries to walk around her again. She steps in Rapunzel's way again.

"Arrgh- move!" Rapunzel snaps at her.

M-C scowls at her. "No."

"Why not?"

"You can't-" M-C pauses, going back to looking uncertain. "You can't tell me what to do," she answers.

"Okay," Rapunzel says, feeling hot with rising anger but trying to control her tone. "Would you move?"

"...No."

Rapunzel can't contain herself anymore. "Why not?!" She explodes at M-C.

"It's- it's annoying, huh?" M-C asks. "Someone trying to make you talk when you don't want to."

Rapunzel's jaw drops. "Are you trying to teach me a lesson right now?"

M-C shifts uncomfortably and answers, "Well, that wasn't the idea, but now, yes."

"Well, what was the idea?" Rapunzel grits out.

M-C frowns. "I'm mad at you," she repeats. "But… I don't want to be mad at you."

Rapunzel waits for a moment to see if she has anything further to say, but she stops there. "Have you considered just not being mad?" Rapunzel asks through her teeth.

M-C's frown deepens. "Yes. I tried and it didn't work."

"Well try harder," Rapunzel suggests, moving to walk around M-C again.

M-C steps in her way. "It doesn't work. I want- I want to talk about it."

Rapunzel puts a hand to her forehead in frustration. "Really, Cass? You want to talk about it? You didn't want to talk about it after it happened, you were so difficult about it, and then you lied to me. And now you're telling me you want to talk about it?"

M-C frowns again. "Yes."

"Can it wait until after I've eaten?" Rapunzel asks, exasperated.

"Have you considered just not being hungry?" M-C shoots back.

"I can't- I can't believe this," Rapunzel says, thrown off by M-C's sudden hostility. "You said you don't want to be mad at me, but you're making me mad at you. Is that any better?"

M-C looks away and doesn't answer for a moment. Then she steps to the side.

Rapunzel blinks in surprise. She didn't actually expect that to work. She starts walking past M-C, looking over to see if she intends to move into Rapunzel's way again, but she stays motionless staring at a spot on the floor.

Rapunzel reaches the doorway without interruption, but she feels a stab of guilt for how rude she'd been. "Cass," she sighs, turning around. "Do you- do you want to come up to my room with me? I want to talk too, I just need to eat first."

M-C doesn't answer or move. After a moment and without looking at Rapunzel, she leaps to the opposite side of the room and disappears through a collapsed section of the wall.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel tries not to dwell on any thoughts before she's able to eat, fully unaware they'd be unproductive.

However, her thoughts after she's eaten are not much more productive.

"I just- arrrghh!!" Rapunzel yells to herself, pacing in her bedroom. "Why did she have to try to talk to me then of all times!"

Rapunzel sits on the edge of her bed and puts her head in her hands. She can't believe she wasted an opportunity to talk to Cassandra when she actually wanted to talk. And Cassandra was in her most agreeable mood! Possibly her emotionally vulnerable mood!

Rapunzel falls back on her bed and looks up at the paintings on her ceiling. I just have to hope that she's still in that mood the next time I see her, she thinks. Which will be… who knows. Maybe I should look for her. If I yell an apology for my behavior while walking around the castle maybe she'll come out. God, dealing with her is like… what was that expression Cass would use? Directing cats? It's like directing cats.

Rapunzel puts her hands up to her face and tries to think pragmatically. "She said she didn't want to be mad at me, and that she tried not to be mad at me. That's a good starting place." Rapunzel sighs. "I don't want to be mad at her either." Rapunzel misses the times in the past couple weeks when Cassandra would act kindly with her, like when they rebuilt parts of the castle together or when Cassandra gave her the carved hairpin. She really hadn't been looking forward to Cassandra being angry with her again…

At least now we'll be resolving this conflict on her terms in her time, I'm sure that'll help, Rapunzel reasons. And a lot of the spikes are gone… so she's probably not in pain like this morning anymore. And I hadn't even realized when we were in the hall, but she still had the satchel I gave her - she didn't destroy it out of anger with me. Which means she probably has the friendship bracelet, too…

Rapunzel rolls over in her bed and decides to start planning. She's still not sure what she's going to say to Cassandra - mainly because she has no idea what Cassandra is going to say to her. But she can at least come up with possibilities, and get her thoughts in order about them.

She pushes herself up. I guess it's time to pull out my notes again, she thinks. That "things Cassandra is angry about" list is a good place to start.

"Okay," Rapunzel sighs to herself a few minutes later, sitting in front of her papers. "Let's think."

She looks over her list she'd assembled of things Cassandra is angry about:

• Didn't like that we'd always resolve problems between us in my time by my rules
• Thinks I've been condescending/a bad friend
• Thinks no one appreciated her/gave her a chance
• Being thought of as a servant
• Gothel abandoning her
• Something to do with my father? Corona? The SUN?

"Well, I had been wondering, but we can definitely add her hand to this list," Rapunzel says to herself. "Aaaand maybe even those other things she had been mad about in the Tree, since it seems likely she never actually got over her anger about those… Regardless of what she told me after it happened…"

• Her hand being hurt (blames me… I think)
• Me not trusting her to take down Hector with the spear
• Me trusting Adira throughout the Tree
• Upset by our argument and maybe the conversation after…
• Making her talk about what happened when she didn't want to

Rapunzel sighs. "Ooookay. Well, this is probably what I should focus on now, if it's her memories from the Great Tree that came back and her hand is hurting." Rapunzel thinks for a moment. "Although some of these are connected to the earlier ones… she's angry about how I made her talk about the Tree when she didn't want to, which was resolving things in my way on my time. She thinks I didn't give her a chance with the spear. And it's possible she thinks I was being condescending during our argument."

Rapunzel frowns. She has to think of what to say if Cassandra brings these things up. And despite how pragmatically she was trying to make herself think, she can't get over her frustrations with Cassandra.

"Cassandra's been a bad friend, too," Rapunzel mutters. "But she's not sitting in front of a bunch of notes, trying to come up with ways to make it up to me."

Rapunzel pinches the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut. She's also completely insane, Rapunzel reminds herself.

Rapunzel scowls, lowering her hand and opening her eyes. This started before the Moonstone, though, she argues internally. She was a bad friend when she refused to talk to me and she was so angry with me about something that wasn't my fault. And she lied, and she didn't trust me to have things handled in the Tree.

But Rapunzel shakes her head. "Argh," she groans. "Focus Rapunzel. You can criticize Cassandra when she's back to normal. Right now you've got a friend and a kingdom to save."

Rapunzel knows that she has to be patient to make sure this conversation goes well. But with all the reasons she has to think that Cassandra's finally ready to talk with and work with her, Rapunzel feels confident that soon they'll be having a real reconciliation, and that's a huge step towards repairing their friendship.

Rapunzel tries to ignore the knowledge that the last time she'd made plans for reconciling and repairing their friendship, it had gone disastrously.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel starts her search in the front entry hall, and to her lack of surprise M-C is not there. She continues from there, calling out an apology for how rude she'd been as she goes.

She's in the throne room when she feels the back of her neck prickle with the sensation of being watched. She whirls around and looks all around her, but she doesn't see M-C.

"Cass?" Rapunzel calls. "I know you're here. I wanted- I wanted to say I'm sorry, for how I acted earlier. I want to talk to you too. Please come out."

No movements or sounds. Rapunzel takes a deep breath and continues: "I understand that you're mad at me. I want to hear what you have to say, and I want to make things right between us."

Rapunzel is reminded of the apology she intended to give with the gift painting. She opens the blue bag at her hip and takes out her journal. Flipping to find the apology, she reads part of it aloud. "I know I haven't shown it, but you mean the world to me. You're my best friend, Cass. I want to be better for you. I want to make things right between us, but only if and when you want to as well. I'll be patient. I promise."

"Do you mean that?"

Rapunzel starts at the voice, which was coming from above her. She looks up and around and finally sees M-C crouched upside down on a part of the rafters near the high ceiling, like a bat.

"C-Cass?" Rapunzel asks, unable to shake off her surprise.

M-C drops from the rafter, twisting in midair to land on her feet in a crouch a short distance in front of Rapunzel.

"I- I-" Rapunzel stutters. "Yes, I do mean it. I- I'm here to listen, Cass. Please, talk to me."

"I don't know if that's true," M-C answers with a sulking tone as she stands. "If I say something you don't like, you won't listen."

Rapunzel takes a deep breath through her nose. "No, I want to hear you. I want to work with you."

M-C doesn't answer for a moment, not looking at Rapunzel. "I think you're lying," M-C finally says, distressed and starting to pace back and forth. "I think I'm going to say something important and you're going to tell me to stop, o-or get mad at me, or-" she cuts off, her breathing harsh.

"Cass- no, that's not true," Rapunzel answers earnestly, trying to placate her. "I- I would never do that-"

"You did!" M-C cries, stopping in her pacing and turning quickly towards her.

Rapunzel is taken aback. "What? No, you're confused, I've only ever wanted to work with you-"

"You're lying!"

Rapunzel is alarmed by M-C's escalating emotions, and she desperately hopes M-C's upset doesn't turn to anger. She knows she has to tread carefully, so she pauses and tries to think of what M-C could be referring to. "A-are you talking about the argument we had in the Great Tree? I- I don't really remember-"

"You told me to stop talking," M-C answers, hugging her own chest. "You didn't like what I was saying so you told me to stop talking and be okay with everything. You told me to be okay with everything and I got hurt and I had-" M-C cuts off. "I don't think you're my best friend. Best friends wouldn't do that to each other. I think you're lying and you just want to make me act a way that you like, you just want me to not be mad anymore."

Rapunzel's mind races as she tries to keep up with what M-C's saying. She vaguely recalls their conversation in the Great Tree - "I'm going to make decisions that you're going to disagree with, and I need you to be okay with that."

"I- I'm sorry," Rapunzel answers, and she means it. "W-when I asked you to be okay with things, I didn't think that you would take that so personally. I didn't mean to-"

"Of course I'd take it personally," M-C cries. "It- it was an order! You ordered me because I was your servant! I don't- I don't mean anything to you," M-C says, miserable. "I was an inconvenience and you wanted me gone, you wanted to replace me. Even now you're only here to get the kingdom back."

Distress bolts through Rapunzel as M-C confesses what Rapunzel had feared: she thinks that Rapunzel saw her as nothing more than a servant. Whatever frustrations Rapunzel had with Cassandra evaporate as soon as she sees how upset Cassandra is, thinking that she doesn't matter to Rapunzel.

"Cass, no," Rapunzel says again, desperate. "I have never thought of you as a servant. You're my friend, my best friend." Rapunzel sees the bracelet is still around M-C's wrist. "That's- that's why we have these bracelets, remember?" Rapunzel lifts her own wrist for M-C to see. "I made these to show our friendship, how much we mean to each other. So that we and anyone else can see that we're close, we're equals."

"No we're not," M-C answers, still upset, putting her other hand to her right wrist. "You told me to be okay with everything because you'll be queen. You'll be queen, and I'd be- I don't even know, I don't know what I would be. Probably still your lady-in-waiting. Or you'd get rid of me. I- I thought things were different when we were travelling but then they weren't. You didn't listen to me, I didn't matter to you."

Rapunzel pauses, wanting to get her words right. "I'm sorry," she repeats. "I am so sorry for making you feel that way, Cass. It was never my intention. Things got- things got weird when we were travelling, everything was so stressful and overwhelming - I didn't realize how bad of a friend I was being. But my behavior was never because I don't care about you. It was all just a problem with me, and how I handled how I was feeling, my fear and my stress."

M-C watches her in silence, still with that miserable expression.

"Please, Cass, you have to understand this," Rapunzel pleads with her, her voice catching as tears start to gather in her eyes. "You're my friend, you're my equal, and you mean so much to me. I-I know I'd be queen someday, but that doesn't mean anything between us. You've always been and will always be my friend more than anything else. A-and I'm here to help you, because I care about you."

M-C looks away. "You're just here for the kingdom," she says. "You think I'm a problem."

"I don't think you're a problem," Rapunzel tells her. "I'm here for you. You know that I can leave, but I won't because I want to make things right between us. And I can stay here, as long as you need, I won't push you or- or try to make you talk to me. I know I've been a bad friend. Please, let me make it up to you."

M-C doesn't answer, still avoiding her gaze.

"I mean it, Cass," Rapunzel says, stepping towards her. "All of it. I know you don't want to believe me, but it's all true. It's- it's why I made the bracelets, and it's why I painted you that picture of us as birds together, and it's why I'm still here. It's all for you, because you mean so much to me."

M-C looks at her wrist with the bracelet in silence. Rapunzel desperately hopes that some of her words are getting through to her - that Cassandra will finally feel comfortable talking to Rapunzel about her feelings on everything else between them.

"...I have to think," M-C says without looking at Rapunzel.

Rapunzel blinks, thrown by the unexpected response. "Sure, of course," she responds. "W-whatever you need." It occurs to Rapunzel that she doesn't know how long M-C needs, so she adds, "You... know where to find me."

M-C nods once, and then she turns to walk quickly out of the throne room. Rapunzel watches her go, hoping desperately that she'll return soon.

Chapter Text

Notes

I've mentioned this before, but M-C is her own character: a hybrid of all the mind pieces from both Cassandra and the Moonstone, and her arc involves her making sense of her memories and building a new, unique sense of self that is a combination of both. Cassandra and the Moonstone as separate entities no longer exist. It's why I insist on calling her "M-C," which is the literary equivalent of hideous character design, instead of just "Cassandra" even though she goes by Cassandra - I want to keep emphasizing that this is a new person. She's certainly not a body that has two distinct halves vying for control (or working together). She's one person. (Which, again, is why sometimes she acts so damn out of character for Cassandra - she isn't Cassandra.)

That all said, the thought of this interaction is hilarious to me:

Cass: I just remembered some stuff and now I'm mad
Moonstone: fuck yeah, I love being angry at people. Who're we pissed at
Cass: Rapunzel
Moonstone: MY WIFE?

Chapter 10: Sacrifice

By the next day, Rapunzel still hasn't seen M-C. She knows that it would be better for her to keep herself occupied rather than wait around feeling stressed, so she goes down towards the city to keep rebuilding.

In the courtyard, she's surprised to encounter not-Max harnessed to a wagon she doesn't recognize. Looking at the contents, she sees that it's the supply of food her friends had said they would send to her. She realizes that not-Max must have brought it from beyond the wall all the way back to the castle, as M-C had described.

Rapunzel is relieved to have the supplies, even as she feels a wave of sadness that she couldn't see her friends. She starts bringing the food in - this time not to her room, but to the castle's kitchen.

She clears out the old remains from the pantries to replace with her supply, and she starts cleaning all of the surfaces in the kitchen. She's decided to start using it rather than making meals over the hearth in her room, since now she knows she's going to be in Underworld for a long time, and she could do much better cooking in a proper kitchen. Further, it has ovens, and Rapunzel intends to bake. She has an idea for convincing M-C to eat.

It takes Rapunzel most of the day, but she finishes restoring the kitchen in time to make herself dinner. She decides to put her baking plan on hold for now - she wants to be on better terms with M-C before she tries to coax her into trying anything.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Walking through the castle the next morning, Rapunzel passes the hallway which used to lead to the highly-guarded chamber where her father had stored the original Sundrop flower. Rapunzel assumed the chamber had been destroyed in M-C's initial rampage, since the previous times she'd looked down the hallway there was a wall of black rock at the end of it where the large doors used to be. But today, walking past it, Rapunzel sees that a double doorway made of black rock had been left open leading to another room.

Rapunzel's curiosity piques and she starts walking towards it, although she's sure the room won't hold anything of interest. M-C's new renovations tended to be bare of both furniture and architectural details, with even the most intricate room she's built having nothing more than arched windows, columns, and blue torches on the walls. The cosmic garden was certainly an anomaly as far as M-C's black rock creations go. But Rapunzel wonders if this now-opened room will lead anywhere new, linking sections of the castle that were previously separated.

It does not - stepping inside, she finds a large, circular chamber with no other doorways, the walls reaching at least three stories up. The floor and ceiling are bare but the room is very different from the others she'd seen: the walls have irregular windows all around the chamber that reveal machinery - a vast network of gears of varying sizes - behind the thin walls. Rapunzel hears the rhythmic ticking of an enormous collection of clockwork, counting the seconds as each gear turns, all the pieces collectively moving at once, pausing, and then moving again.

Rapunzel is startled and baffled by this creation. She sees no clock face, so she doesn't think keeping time is its purpose, although she can't imagine what else it could be for. She remembers how the horse specters and that unsettling copy of Owl appeared to move by gears, and she wonders anxiously if this room is a part of an enormous creature of Cassandra's design. Seeing the gears turn reminds her of Varian's automatons, which fills her with unease.

Rapunzel is particularly confused by the clockwork black rock creations since Cassandra had never shown any kind of interest in engineering before. She wonders if this is some Moonstone power, allowing Cassandra to make specters and moving machines without thinking about the details, just willing what she wants into existence. It certainly seemed that way with the Owl copy, at least - if she had actually designed and put it together by hand, surely she wouldn't have become convinced it was real.

Rapunzel walks closer to one of the windows in the wall showing the machinery underneath. There are dozens of different kinds of gears, latches and hooks, springs, and balance weights moving. She suspects that there's clockwork under all of the walls, reaching up to the high ceiling. But what is it for? Rapunzel doesn't see any buttons or levers that might control… whatever it is.

She's so distracted staring into it that she doesn't realize M-C is behind her until she speaks.

"I was looking for you," M-C says, stepping into the room.

Rapunzel jumps and turns quickly, feeling embarrassed that she'd been caught examining Cassandra's work so intently.

"Well it looks like the tables are flipped," Rapunzel responds, flustered, trying both to distract M-C from what she had been doing and to communicate friendliness with a joke.

M-C stops and frowns. "...What?"

"You know, that expression you'd use," Rapunzel explains sheepishly. "Usually I'm looking for you, but now you're looking for me, so the tables are flipped."

M-C squints at her. "...Do you mean, 'How the tables have turned'?"

"Darn, thought I'd got that one," Rapunzel says to herself. She can't believe Cassandra, with her broken mess of a mind, still has a better grasp on colloquialisms than she does.

"...Okay, anyway," M-C starts, brushing aside Rapunzel's social ineptitude and walking into the chamber. "I wanted to talk to you."

Rapunzel clears her throat and straightens, glad that Cassandra seems more stable, and not the wreck she was in the throne room. "Right, yes, I am here to listen."

M-C stops and crosses her arms, but she doesn't look angry. Instead she sighs through her nose and looks away from Rapunzel. "Why did you use that spell?"

Rapunzel knew that this was coming, and she's ready with her answer. "Hector was possessed by Zhan Tiri's magic, do you remember? He had Eugene and Lance in his grasp, and I was scared he was going to hurt them. I had to do something."

"The spear was right there," M-C responds, looking over at her with her eyebrows drawn together. "I told you I could stop him, but you didn't listen to me. You didn't believe me. Why not? Did you not think I was capable?"

"No, that wasn't it," Rapunzel tells her earnestly. "I did believe you could do it, I just thought it would be faster if I used the spell."

"But why would you even use the spell when you knew you couldn't control it, and how dangerous it was?" M-C asks intensely.

"Because our friends were in more danger, immediate danger," Rapunzel responds. "Hector could have killed them at any moment. I needed to choose the fastest option to save them. It was a split second decision, and it had nothing to do with what I thought of your ability. I just wanted to save them as fast as possible. I could never live with myself if our friends were hurt."

"But what about yourself?!" M-C exclaims, becoming more agitated. "The tree started collapsing, and you knew you wouldn't be able to stop the spell!"

"It was worth the risk," Rapunzel answers quietly.

"No it wasn't!" M-C explodes. "It was a stupid decision! You chose to put yourself in harm's way to rescue the others!"

"Of course I did," Rapunzel responds.

"Why?"

"Because I value their safety over my own," Rapuzel tells her. "I would put myself in danger if it takes my friends out of it."

"Why are you like this?" M-C cries. "You- you have no sense of self-preservation! Do you know how hard it is to protect someone who doesn't even try to protect herself?"

Rapunzel takes a deep breath through her nose, trying to contain her frustration. "I appreciate how you did so much to protect me, Cass," she responds levelly, "but I never asked you to do that. I'd put myself in danger to take you out of it, too. There was no need for you to come running after me."

M-C stares at her, stunned, and a short silence stretches between them that's broken only by the rhythmic, echoing tick of all the gears around them turning in unison.

"I know you never asked me," M-C finally answers. "But it was what I promised your father, and it was why I came on the trip. It was…" She pauses, searching for words. "My purpose."

The Moonstone at her chest glows just barely brighter, only enough to catch Rapunzel's attention - and M-C's words reminding her of how Cassandra stayed by her side so faithfully during the trip, contrasted harshly against how it all ended, makes Rapunzel feel a flare of frustration. Before she can stop herself, she looks away and snaps, "And was it your purpose to betray me and steal the Moonstone?"

M-C frowns at her with a puzzled expression. "What are you talking about?"

Rapunzel glances back at her and is surprised by how genuine her expression is. She doesn't… remember taking the Moonstone, still, Rapunzel realizes.

Rapunzel considers laying it all out for Cassandra and demanding she explain herself. But, remembering her first day in Underworld when Cassandra admitted she didn't know why she did everything, Rapunzel doubts that this Cassandra would be able to explain herself either.

"I still never asked you to protect me," Rapunzel says quietly instead of answering. "And I didn't want you to in the tree, either. I wanted you to flee with the others."

"I couldn't just abandon you!" M-C says intensely, throwing an arm out. "I just- I don't understand your thinking. You could have died! Even if it'd save the others, why would you risk that?!"

Rapunzel stares at her blankly. "I- why wouldn't I risk that? That was the whole point of the journey, Cass, putting others over myself. I didn't know if I'd ever come back from the Dark Kingdom, but I went there for my people, for Corona. It's what I was meant for."

M-C stares at her stunned again for a couple moments, the echoing ticking around them. "That's- that's insane," she finally stutters. "You're not meant to be some sacrifice for other people!"

"If it would save others, then yes, I am," Rapunzel answers firmly.

M-C's looks at her with distressed confusion across her face. "Why would you think that?"

Rapunzel doesn't understand what's so confusing to her. "It's- it's just how things are. It's what I'm supposed to do. It was my destiny to go to the Dark Kingdom, to stop the black rocks and save the world. If I had to die to do that…" She puts her hands out in a vague shrug. "It's what was supposed to happen."

"That's not true," M-C tells her quietly, her demeanor abruptly shifting to solemn. "There's no such thing as destiny. Not here."

"What do you mean, not here?" Rapunzel asks, thrown off by both her words and the shift in her mood.

"Free will," M-C answers, putting a hand out for emphasis. "Free will cannot be violated, so things can't be preordained here. It's not allowed."

Rapunzel frowns. "What do you mean, not allowed? And how can you be so sure destiny doesn't exist? Back in the Dark Kingdom you said the Moonstone was your destiny. So what, you just don't believe in it anymore?"

M-C tilts her head, her eyebrows drawing together. "What are you talking about?"

"The Moonstone, Cass," Rapunzel stresses. "That gem in your chest, the one that lets you make the black rock and... do I don't even know what else. You took it and said it was your destiny."

M-C frowns. "I could always make the black rocks."

"You-" Rapunzel starts, baffled, but she stops herself. "Hhhhalright you don't remember," Rapunzel sighs, exasperated. "Well, you're wrong. You could only make the black rocks after you took the Moonstone, which is that gemstone in your armor, which you said was your destiny. And now you don't believe in it?"

"Destiny doesn't exist here," Cassandra repeats. "There are rules," she holds up her hand and, looking at it, creates a geometric truss approximating an orb the size of an apple, which she drops and it falls to the ground. "And there are influences," she gently kicks the orb and it rolls across the ground. "But there isn't a determined outcome. There aren't things that need to happen. Everything relies on chance and the choices that are made by those with free will." M-C looks up at Rapunzel. "You don't have a destiny, no one does here."

"...What, you're some kind of philosopher now?" Rapunzel asks in disbelief. "Come on Cass, how could you know any of that? And what do you mean by here?"

M-C looks up. "There are other places with those who can't break from their natures, and everything comes together like a clockwork machine. But that's not here." She levels her gaze at Rapunzel again. "You can break from your nature. You don't have to sacrifice yourself for others."

Rapunzel feels surprise at the conversation circling back, and continued disbelief at Cassandra waxing poetic for the first time in her life. "I just- I don't understand. Where's all this coming from?"

M-C shrugs. "It's just how things are."

Rapunzel stares at her, at a loss for what to say, and the rhythmic shift of machinery counts the seconds around them. Finally, she thinks of something. "Well, Cass," she starts, "if you don't believe in destiny anymore, would you give the Moonstone to me?"

M-C tilts her head again with a puzzled expression.

"The-" Rapunzel sighs, exasperated. "Look down at yourself. Do you see that blue rock? Can I have it?"

M-C does look down at herself, but she doesn't answer immediately. Finally she looks back up again, admitting, "I don't understand."

Rapunzel slaps her hand to her own forehead, and walks closer to M-C to point directly at the Moonstone. "The stone, Cass. This one, right here. If it doesn't mean anything to you, can I have it?"

"...I don't think so," M-C answers, finally looking where Rapunzel is pointing.

"W-what? Why not?" Rapunzel asks incredulously, in disbelief she still wouldn't give it up, even when it means nothing to her.

M-C looks back up at her. "Free will."

Rapunzel is very, very close to grabbing her to shake her aggressively, but she stops herself. "But why would you decide that?"

M-C thinks for a moment. "Breaking from my nature," she answers.

"...So you're not giving it to me to, what, prove a point about how you don't have to do what I say?" Rapunzel asks in disbelief. "Cass, there are better ways to do that. The Moonstone is dangerous, and it messed you up badly. I'm not giving you an order, I'm asking you as a friend. Would you give me the stone, for your sake and Corona's?"

M-C doesn't respond. Instead she turns to the wall and walks towards one of the windows showing the exposed machinery, and lifts a hand towards it. She pulls a small gear with the diameter of a coin from its axle, and the entire network of clockwork all the way up and around the circular chamber's walls abruptly ceases. The gear falls from her hand, and it clinks loudly against the floor in the new silence.

"It didn't do anything, anyway," M-C tells her, walking out the door.

Rapunzel watches her go at a complete loss. "You're so confusing!" She finally yells. She puts a hand to her face. "Wait, does this mean we're okay now?!" She shouts after realizing she has no idea where this conversation leaves them, but she gets no answer.

"I miss nice clueless Cass," Rapunzel mutters to herself.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Later that day, Rapunzel is pacing in her room.

"What was the deal with Cass?!" Rapunzel demands of her empty room. "She- she started off normal, and then she turned into some kind of... theologist! Where did that come from?!"

[...]Rapunzel considers what M-C had said about destiny. She thinks about how her plan to grab the Moonstone was derailed so easily by Cassandra's choices - her free will. She wonders if it's possible that she really doesn't have a destiny.

Regardless, she knows that she still has to get the Moonstone, for the good of Corona and Cassandra. She decides that even if it isn't a destiny, it's the choice she's making with free will. And she concedes, again, that Cassandra is also insane, so she probably shouldn't take her words too seriously.

But she thinks again about what M-C said - that she doesn't need to sacrifice herself for others. She wonders if it's true.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

[Dream sequence]

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Notes

Something to note with regard to the underworld castle metaphor: their conversation about destiny, which begins to introduce the mechanics of the divine, occurs in what used to be the chamber that housed the Sundrop flower.

–

There's a lot to say about this chapter, which is impressive because it's not even fully developed, much less fully written. It begins to introduce the "rules" that the world has. I'll lay it out here, although I intended for it to be revealed slowly in the fully written story:

There are mortals, and there are divine. Mortals obviously have the drawback of possessing physical bodies that die, but they're also not bound by the same rules that the divine are.

The divine are immortal, but they cannot stray from the nature of how they were made. They don't technically have free will - while they can make choices, it's only within the bounds of their nature. As M-C mentions in this chapter, because it is predictable how different types of divine will act, grand schemes can be crafted and forced to play out on divine planes.

(Unrelated, but the two largest categories of divine are chaos and order. The Moonstone, whose magic relates to largely unreactive inorganics that exist in very still and repetitive structures of molecules, is a being of order. The Sundrop, whose magic relates to extremely reactive organics that are constantly in motion undergoing chemical reactions, is a being of chaos.

Neither chaos nor order are inherently good or bad. They just are. The Moonstone tends towards structure, stability, and not-changing. The Sundrop tends towards impulsivity, carefreeness, and changing.

Divine (which no mortals can enter) and semidivine (which mortals can enter) planes are often either chaos- or order-oriented, too. The House of Yesterday's Tomorrows was a semidivine chaos plane. The nonsense dimension Zhan Tiri - who is a lesser chaos demon - is imprisoned in is also a semidivine chaos plane. Asterium is a divine order plane, but they would often vacation exploring semidivine chaos planes because 1) the Sundrop is chaos oriented and our girl needs to let loose, and 2) she loves mortals.

These are, again, all things that would be introduced in random order via cryptic pieces through the narrative, spoken by M-C. As an example, in a scene where M-C is suddenly confused by memories of the House of Yesterday's Tomorrows, Rapunzel might have shown M-C pictures that Rapunzel drew in her journal to help her remember, and M-C would note "ah. Chaos plane. Semidivine" before moving on immediately to say something else.)

Part of the Sundrop's divine nature is that she needs to take care of the ones she loves. Another part of her nature is that she feels a great deal of love and compassion for everything. In Asterium, these parts of the Sundrop's nature aren't a problem: as a divine being with a lot of magic, she is able to take care of the ones she loves - most of all, the Moonstone.

But on Earth, where the Sundrop is magically bound in a mortal form and able to be harmed, these parts of her nature are a huge problem. Compelled to take care of and heal anyone in need, it's why she allowed herself to be dug up and turned into an elixir, even though it was at great personal cost to herself: she lost all her memories. Her nature causes her to be extremely self-sacrificial - and when in a weakened and mortal-bound state, either as a flower or as Rapunzel, this is very bad.

Part of the Moonstone's divine nature is that she needs to protect the ones she loves. Another part of her nature is that she loves very sparingly - on Asterium, her love was limited to the Sundrop, and maybe a few of the Sundrop's favorite creatures (both divine and mortal). In Asterium, these parts of the Moonstone's nature aren't a problem: her protection and service to the Sundrop is done in the context of an equal partnership where the love she gives is returned in equal measure.

But on Earth, where the Moonstone suddenly has a lot of reason to doubt her bond with the Sundrop (Rapunzel), these parts of her nature are a huge problem. She's compelled to serve and protect the Sundrop, but she suddenly has no idea if her acts of love are simply what is expected of her as a servant rather than understood to be freely given and her love being returned in equal measure. It's why she was freaking out so severely in the throne room. While Cassandra might have been hurt by the thought Rapunzel didn't care about their friendship as she did, it made M-C have a complete breakdown.

So, coming back to this chapter: it's about the Sundrop and the Moonstone breaking from their natures. Or, at least, it introduces that concept.

Both the Sundrop and Moonstone are fused with mortals now. Rapunzel and M-C are semidivine beings, and they can act against their natures - even change their natures, which is something they never would have been able to do as divine beings.

Rapunzel needs to break from the nature that causes herself to be so self-sacrificial. She needs to learn how to value herself more and understand that her desires matter, too. This connects to the arc of the story of Rapunzel learning to do what she wants, and not just what's expected of her by others. (Further, she has to learn that not everything is deserving of her love, but that's not really addressed much in this story.)

M-C needs to break from the nature that inclines her to engage in (what would be) a super unhealthy relationship. Her drive to serve/protect the Sundrop has been deeply complicated by the fact that Cassandra's service to/protection of Rapunzel was not in a mutually respectful, equal-power-dynamic, same-amount-of-love-given-and-received relationship. While Rapunzel does love Cassandra the same amount and she is working on being better, she hasn't fully gotten through to M-C about that yet (and M-C asserting herself as her own person rather than being a complete doormat helps Rapunzel be better, too - if M-C were just a doormat, Rapunzel might be inclined to assume everything is fine and that she doesn't have to apologize/recognize boundaries/etc).

So in this chapter, when Rapunzel asks for the Moonstone, M-C refuses. To M-C, handing Rapunzel the Moonstone would have been an act of literally and figuratively putting her life into Rapunzel's hands - and while she would have done this readily on Asterium due to her nature (and she probably would have done it anyway, even without the constraints of her nature, since she had a lot of faith in the Sundrop and their equal bond), she refuses on Earth because she's not bound by her nature, and she's been hurt enough by Rapunzel that she no longer has that absolute trust.

This connects to the arc of M-C's development, becoming stable and her own character - she's her own person, independent of her bond to the Sundrop. (She also has to learn that things other than the Sundrop are deserving of her love, which is addressed in this story.)

Related:

The Sundrop and Moonstone relationship is the dynamic of an old-fasioned/old-school femme and butch couple I read once that's stuck with me: the femme thanked her butch for doing something for her, the butch said, "of course, it's my job to serve you" and the femme responded "and it's my job to love you." The relationship being a balance between two very different expressions of love - one who loves to show love through physical and verbal affection, one who loves to show love through service, both getting exactly what they need from the other because it's what they both crave.

That's the Sundrop and Moonstone in this story. "I'll take care of you" and "I'll protect you"; "I'll adore you" and "I'll serve you"; a lady and her knight; an OFOS femme and her butch; each equally loving towards each other with mutual respect.

And this dynamic rocks! It's excellent! As long as there is that equal love and mutual respect. (I mean, that applies to all relationships.) Once 1) M-C is fully her own person; 2) M-C's bond with Rapunzel is fully repaired, and M-C fully believes that Rapunzel has changed to be better; 3) M-C knows Rapunzel will offer her love in equal measure, and there's no power dynamic complications; then M-C can choose if she wants to resume a relationship and showing of love like this.

(And she will obviously it's a cassunzel fic and i'm a huge ass lesbian)

–

This chapter mentions a dream sequence - the dream sequences aren't exactly visions of the future, more like possibilities of what Rapunzel and M-C's life together might look like in the future, influenced by truths that Rapunzel doesn't know yet. So, half-dream half-vision. But I thought that each chapter should include one, and I have a few ideas for them - which I haven't written out. Like, not even summaries (sorry). They'd all be the same vibe/style of the ones already in the story.

With one, Rapunzel would be woken from her dream by M-C shouting "Rapunzel!" and Rapunzel wakes to see her hair holding M-C, having grabbed her and dragged her over to Rapunzel in her sleep. Then her hair stops glowing and drops because she's awake, and M-C falls onto her. Rapunzel would be like "what is going on??" and M-C would respond "fuck if I know I just saw your hair being weird from outside so I came in to see what was going on and it GRABBED ME." Since the Sundrop's roots sought out the Moonstone for so many years, and Rapunzel's hair mimics the roots, as soon as M-C was near her hair lunged for her.

Chapter 11: Trust

Rapunzel figures they're probably on good enough terms now that she might be able to convince M-C to try something new, so Rapunzel bakes a banana cream pie for her with her new food supplies. M-C appears shortly after she finishes baking it - Rapunzel wonders if the smell had drawn her - and Rapunzel convinces her to eat some. M-C does, but she vomits because she hasn't eaten anything in months and her stomach doesn't know what to do with it.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel makes very mild broth with bread to try to help M-C start eating again. She thinks that the normalcy of having meals will help M-C's mind recover. M-C starts to spend some meal times with Rapunzel (less than once a day on average, though) and tries to start eating.

M-C is often very quiet during their encounters, so Rapunzel doesn't get much information on how much she remembers, and Rapunzel doesn't want to push her.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C lashes out at Rapunzel out of the blue for "trying to get rid of" her. Rapunzel doesn't understand what she's talking about and tries to assure M-C that she never tried to or wanted to do that. M-C talks about how Rapunzel considered her useless and expendable because Rapunzel chose Adira over her in the Great Tree.

"You trust everyone but me, Rapunzel, how am I supposed to not take that personally? How are you even able to trust other people after what Gothel did to you?" Her tone was accusatory, but Rapunzel could see the hurt in her eyes.

And she was right. Rapunzel had trusted Lance, when he came to Corona to recruit Eugene for a theft. She had trusted Varian, when he used her to get the Sundrop flower from Corona castle's vault. She had trusted Mrs. Sugarby, the painting teacher who ended up being a wraith devoted to the demon Zhan Tiri. She had trusted Adira, who purposely left Rapunzel in the dark for her own plan to solve the problem of the black rocks. She had trusted that bizarre couple in the woods, who wanted to imprison them as birds for decoration. She had trusted Calliope, who turned out to be a fraud (well, half a fraud). She had trusted Matthews, the housekeeper of the chaotic House of Yesterday's Tomorrows, who also ended up being a wraith devoted to the demon Zhan Tiri.

But she had also trusted Eugene, who turned out to have a heart of gold, rescued her from Gothel, and became her best friend. She had trusted the pub thugs, who all revealed their gentle sides and helped Rapunzel when she left her tower. She had trusted Lance, who - after a rocky start - also turned out to have a heart of gold, and became another of Rapunzel's closest friends. She had trusted Attila, who she proved didn't commit the crime he was accused of. She had trusted Vex and Quaid, who worked with her to bring Vardaros back to its former glory. She had trusted Alfons and the other Lorbs, who invited them into their community for the weeks they had spent on the island. She had trusted Stalyan, who helped her rescue her friends from prison. She had trusted Varian, who had helped Rapunzel save Corona, putting behind him the terrible things he'd done in the past out of grief and fear.

And she had trusted Cassandra, down to the depths of her heart she trusted Cassandra, but Cassandra had asked her to do the one thing she couldn't do. Cassandra asked her not to trust others.

Looking at M-C's heartbroken expression, Rapunzel knows she has to tread carefully. She hesitates before speaking, trying to put into words something she'd never said before.

"All my life, I had been told that the world is full of bad people," Rapunzel starts slowly. "That if I ever left my tower I'd encounter all kinds of terrible, untrustworthy people who'd want to use me and hurt me, and that's why I was only safe in my tower and that I'd have to stay there." Rapunzel looks down, feeling grief fill her as she thinks about the years she'd lost. "But she was lying to make me scared, to control me. The world is full of wonderful, loving people and I can't- I won't go back to living in that fear again," she says, looking back up at M-C, but her determination falters meeting M-C's eyes. "Th-that's why I couldn't believe you when you'd tell me not to trust people. I know you were only trying to keep me safe and I'm thankful for that Cass, I really am. But I just can't live the way you do."

Rapunzel braces herself for - she's not sure what. M-C's expression was unreadable as Rapunzel spoke, and Rapunzel can't expect how she'd answer. Would she be kind and understanding? Would she be callous and call her naive again?

The silence stretches between them, and M-C finally looks away. "Do I remind you of her?"

Rapunzel's heart jumps from the tension finally being broken, but she doesn't understand the question. "What?"

M-C still doesn't look at her. "Do I remind you of Gothel?" she asks the wall.

Rapunzel's eyes widen and her heart drops. "No," she breathes. "No, never. Not even for a second."

M-C doesn't answer. Rapunzel wonders how long she'd been burdened by this question, and what other examples she'd come up with to prove to herself that Rapunzel secretly feared and resented her.

"You're nothing like her, Cass," Rapunzel stresses, stepping towards her. "You're- you're the opposite of her. She wanted to keep me locked up for herself. You brought me out of Corona and made me feel free like no one else did. You came with me on my journey to keep me safe. You sacrificed so much for me."

M-C doesn't answer, still. Rapunzel feels scared that she doesn't believe her.

[…]

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Second Month

M-C appears in the castle town while Rapunzel's trying to clear debris and rebuild things that she can. M-C begins to help her, and the work goes much faster. M-C says "like the treehouse" when they're working. Rapunzel realizes she's referencing the treehouse they built together on the island, and feels happy about her memory and their teamwork.

In addition to occasional meal times, M-C begins helping Rapunzel in the city regularly as well.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel goes up to the black rock platform at the top of the castle one night for the open view to look at the stars, and she finds M-C there. She tries to talk to M-C, who doesn't answer, so she just looks at the stars with her. After a while M-C tells Rapunzel "you make it look so easy". Rapunzel doesn't know what she's talking about.

Rapunzel falls asleep stargazing next to M-C; she wakes up the next morning in her room, with her hair down and arranged in its usual spiral next to the bed.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Notes:

Another not-fully-developed, much less written out, chapter. The scene where Rapunzel's trying to convince M-C that she doesn't remind her of Gothel is one that I don't know where exactly it'd go yet - I'd just write and see what happens. But, obviously I'm not writing it now, so you only get pieces. Sorry again lol

This chapter mentions M-C spending quite a bit of time with Rapunzel - I'd use these moments to sprinkle in those small cryptic pieces of the divine mechanics and things that the Moonstone and Sundrop did together on Asterium or while exploring other planes. And, obviously, to communicate that M-C is still nuts. Maybe have some chaotic mentions from Cassandra's childhood, too. Lot of possibilities lol

Chapter 12: Fears

Notes:

I want to note that this chapter has a fairly upsetting scene in it. There's no in-story violence - it's just a red-rock-induced vision that includes not-detailed… I guess gore? There's a lot of blood, and a person dying of the decay spell, and the body decaying. Again, it's not detailed and the story's still firmly rated T in my opinion, but it is upsetting. I figured I should put a warning.

Rapunzel had spent much of her first month in Underworld surveying the damage done to the capital city, working on clearing debris, and completing repairs - at least, to the degree that she was capable, as one person without access to new timber. But she had her unbreakable hair to create pulleys, and she found many tools in carpentry shops for her work. With M-C helping her lately as well, she's even able to get the black spikes removed and large pieces of stone lifted with ease, so her work goes much faster.

And now, it occurs to Rapunzel that she should check on the villages beyond the capital. Her people lived on the mainland, too, and Rapunzel is sure that Cassandra did as much damage out there in her initial rampage. Rapunzel hadn't left the city since M-C brought her to the border wall to show Rapunzel the window made in it for her - she already had enough work to do in the capital, Rapunzel had figured, so she didn't see a reason to go on a tour of the rest of the kingdom with one of the creepy horse specters. But she can't think of an excuse to put it off any longer, so one morning she packs a bag with food and water for a day trip, and she goes down to the front courtyard.

Rapunzel considers asking M-C to join her, but M-C didn't come to meet her for breakfast and Rapunzel doesn't see her on the way down. She thinks it would be a bother to Cassandra anyway, and that she would likely decline, so it wouldn't be worth the trouble of trying to seek her out. Cassandra still seems to feel no responsibility or guilt about the state of the kingdom, which is something Rapunzel hopes she'll start to show once she's recovered more.

So alone down in the courtyard, Rapunzel hesitantly puts a hand to the statue-still not-Max, and he comes to life under her touch. Putting aside her unease Rapunzel mounts him, and once she has settled into the saddle with her bag, she taps her heels to his sides to head for the gate.

Cantering through the city streets, Rapunzel finds herself smiling as she rides for the first time in over a month. She had forgotten how much she missed it (creepy horse notwithstanding). She starts to regret not looking for Cassandra to ask her to accompany her. They could have raced together like they used to.

Rapunzel makes her way to the farthest village and decides that she'll work her way back towards the city over the course of the day. Rapunzel spends several hours walking through village streets, writing in a notebook how many buildings were damaged, to what extent, which were homes, which were businesses…

She takes a break to eat lunch, and then she continues her work. Unsurprisingly, Old Corona has the worst damage, which had already been ravaged by spikes before Cassandra even returned to Corona.

In the late afternoon, when leaving one of the villages, Rapunzel catches sight of the capital city from a hilltop and she sees the castle in flames.

Her heart stops and sends not-Max into a sprint, tearing towards the city. She keeps looking up towards the castle as she rides, trying to find a spot where the fire might have originated, wondering if it had somehow spread from the hearth in her room. Or maybe one of Cassandra's blue torches? But could those cause a fire like this...? The castle is enveloped in a red glow that Rapunzel is certain is normal flames.

As they ride across the bridge and into the city, Rapunzel can see the castle more clearly - and she becomes more confused. The glowing red seems to be isolated to the parts of the castle augmented with black rock, and Rapunzel can't see any smoke rising from it.

When she enters the courtyard she is confronted fully by the sight of all the black rock of the castle turned entirely red. Her eyes flick across the castle front but she sees no flames - only the transformed and glowing stones. She dismounts not-Max and runs towards the castle's entrance, pausing in front of the first red spike she reaches. She holds her hand close to it but feels no heat. Hesitating for only a moment, she puts her hand directly against the stone.

The stone gives off no heat - instead of feeling a burn on her hand, she feels like her head is being cleaved in half, and visions tear through her mind.

Cassandra, wielding the Moonstone, lays waste to her mother's family's kingdom: the plants die around her and peoples homes crumble from the black spikes and dark clouds follow her everywhere she goes, and Rapunzel knows it's happening because of her, that she wasn't good enough and she couldn't repair her bond with Cassandra in time-

Rapunzel tears her hand away from the spike, gasping for breath and feeling her stomach lurch. Her entire body shakes from the terror-induced adrenaline in her system, and tears rise to her eyes.

"What- was that," Rapunzel chokes out. She blinks hard while trying to steady her breathing, attempting to rid her mind of the terrible vision she'd been shown and swallow her nausea. She tries to figure out what just happened to her, and the only thing that comes to her mind is that terrible totem on Tirapai island which offered lovely visions of whatever the holder most wanted to see, that twisted into nightmares the longer a person used it.

Except she had destroyed the totem, she's not remotely near a place of Lorb magic, and the glowing red is coming from the black rocks, which means it must be connected to Cassandra. Something's wrong, Rapunzel thinks as she turns away from the red spike, bolting into the castle. Something is very, very wrong.

"Cass!" Rapunzel shouts for her as she runs through the castle. As she moves through the red-bathed light of the interior, she sees that some of the stone glows brighter and angrier than the rest, and she chooses to head in that direction. She dodges spikes and stone corridors, desperate never to touch one of the red rocks again.

The intensifying glow of the stones leads her to her own bedroom's door.

Rapunzel pushes it open and sees M-C crumpled on the floor in the middle of the room, her full-body armor glowing entirely like coals on a fire. Several bright red spikes have shot up from the ground around her where she's on her knees, bowed forward and holding her head with her hands, her back to Rapunzel.

"Cass," Rapunzel breathes, rushing into the room. She moves in front of M-C, dodging the spikes around her, and kneels in front of her. M-C doesn't move or look up, and Rapunzel can see she's staring at the ground in front of her, her wide eyes unfocused, the clawed gauntlets on her hands piercing the skin under her hair and leaving a slender trail of blood down her face. Her expression is stricken, and Rapunzel knows she's caught in a terrible vision like the one Rapunzel had suffered at the castle's entrance.

"Cass!" Rapunzel shouts at her again. She looks over M-C, seeing all of her armor enveloped in red and offering nowhere for Rapunzel to grab to shake her and try to snap her out of it. "Cass, it's a vision, it's not real!"

No reaction. If anything, her grip on her head becomes tighter.

Rapunzel has no idea what to do. Cassandra is completely enveloped by the horror-inducing red stone. Rapunzel tries to blink away tears gathering in her eyes. She had experienced just a moment of the stone's visions and her body still shook from the terror. How long had Cassandra been stuck like this?

"Cass," Rapunzel says again, her voice breaking. She reaches again towards M-C, and stops her hands short. She can't even cup M-C's face because of the gauntlets in her way.

Rapunzel feels tears fall from her eyes as she decides in a single impulsive moment what she should do, and she throws her arms around M-C, pulling her into a desperate hug.

If she had given herself enough time to think, she might have hoped she would be ready for the feeling of her skull being split open and the shock injected directly into her veins, but she isn't. She tries to focus on the cold of the armor in her arms, and she presses her face into M-C's neck as the terrible vertigo hits her and the horrible visions fill her mind.

Black spikes destroying a vast landscape. The inside of her tower, the windows locked, a hand touching her hair from behind. Cassandra killing her father.

"It's not real," Rapunzel chokes out, hugging M-C tighter. "It's not true, Cass. None of it's real."

Cassandra killing her mother. Cassandra killing Eugene. Cassandra, dead on the ground in front of her.

"It's not real," Rapunzel tells her again, her voice breaking and tears pouring down her face. "Don't believe it, none of it's true. Whatever you're seeing, Cass, it's not real."

Blood pours out of some wound in her chest that Rapunzel can't find. Her hands become covered in red as she searches. She doesn't look up but she knows the world falls to ruin around her, and that Cassandra died hating her.

Rapunzel can't even muster words anymore. She chokes on her sobs.

Rapunzel takes her hair from her braid and it falls across Cassandra. Her hair becomes saturated in red as she starts to sing, "Flower gleam and glow..."

Rapunzel's hair glows golden, and Cassandra's eyes open. Rapunzel feels her heart soar as her magic works. She continues singing: "Wither and decay..."

The words pour out of her, and she can't stop them. Rapunzel's hair turns black, and she's frozen in place. Cassandra's flesh begins to burn as Rapunzel sings, and Cassandra screams a horrible, animalistic screech.

"Set the spirit free." Tears are pouring down Rapunzel's face again, and Cassandra's blood dries and cracks as her flesh decays beneath.

A hand touches Rapunzel's back, and she's finally able to move, Cassandra's body rotting in front of her. Rapunzel whirls around, about to scream at the interloper to flee and she sees M-C kneeling down behind her, her ghost-pale flesh entirely whole, her blue eyes bright and a distraught expression across her face. Rapunzel feels frozen again and can't bear to look back at the body behind her, in case she'd lose this Cassandra too.

M-C pulls Rapunzel into a hug, slipping one arm around her waist and the other across her back, under her hair. She holds Rapunzel, and Rapunzel can feel the cold armor through her clothes. She puts her arms around M-C and weeps against her while the apocalypse melts away around them.

"I killed you," Rapunzel sobs.

"You didn't. It wasn't real," M-C murmurs back.

"It could have been."

"It wasn't."

Rapunzel shakes her head where she had it buried in M-C's neck, unable to form words. They stay there, caught in their hug, for what feels like eternity.

When Rapunzel finally lifts her head, she sees they're in her room again, and the angry red light that had assaulted her eyes everywhere she looked is gone. M-C's armor is black again and at Rapunzel's slight motion, M-C releases her and leans back to look at her.

Rapunzel wipes at her face with her sleeves. She feels sick through her stomach, and her heart trembles in her chest. M-C studies her, and Rapunzel looks downwards, not meeting her gaze.

Rapunzel swallows hard, self-conscious despite her ailments. "I- I was supposed to be comforting you," Rapunzel stutters.

"You did," M-C tells her quietly, and she reaches over to brush away one of her tears, as gently as a gauntleted hand could. "You saved me."

"C-Cass," Rapunzel says, her voice still trembling, trying not to reach for her hand and clasp it for comfort. She still saw the visions every time she closed her eyes, like they were burned into the backs of her eyelids. "What was that?"

M-C's eyebrows draw together into her distraught expression. "I don't know. I'm so sorry, Rapunzel. I'm so, so sorry."

Rapunzel looks up at M-C and her nausea flares again seeing the blood on M-C's face. There was blood caught in her hair, too, from other claw marks on her head.

"L-Let me clean that for you," Rapunzel says, not even realizing that M-C might not know what she's talking about. M-C nods anyway, and waits patiently while Rapunzel stands shakily to heat water on her hearth.

M-C seems to be in considerably better condition than Rapunzel, not suffering from residual crying or trembling, but Rapunzel knows that her demeanor can be deceiving. M-C stays with Rapunzel for the rest of the day, and even lays next to Rapunzel in her bed that night to offer her guard against nightmares, promising to wake her if she becomes distressed in her sleep.

The next morning M-C is still there, and somehow Rapunzel managed to sleep through the night without being terrorized by the visions she had seen the day before.

M-C doesn't leave Rapunzel's side for several days.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel realizes in all this time, she hadn't seen M-C using weapons once. Since Cassandra would have weapons practice as part of her daily routine, she decides to reintroduce it to M-C. The armory is destroyed and the weapons in Cassandra's room are crushed under several tons of debris, so Rapunzel draws a picture of Cassandra's sword and asks M-C to make it from black rock. She does, and once it's in her hand she swings it around a bit, staring at it. Rapunzel pulls out an apple she'd been hiding and lobs it at her. M-C's arm flies up, and her sword slices it into eight pieces.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C tells Rapunzel that she doesn't have to wear her hair up in the castle, because she knows how heavy it is. She touches Rapunzel's hair. It's kinda gay

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Notes:

Yet another not-fully-developed chapter - this one addresses Rapunzel's latent guilt about the decay spell.

The red fear rocks were caused when M-C wasn't able to find Rapunzel in the castle, she saw one of the horses was gone, and she entered Rapunzel's room to find it empty: she thought Rapunzel had left. That despite how close they'd been lately, Rapunzel abandoned her. She thought that Rapunzel suddenly hated her and now she was going to be alone. It caused her to fully break down in terror, causing the red rocks.

Rapunzel and M-C are very close by the end of this chapter, having spent so much time together.

That is intentional. The next two chapters are fully written out.

Chapter 13: Revenge

"Why don't you take your mind off your age, and make a wish?" Rapunzel prompts Eugene with a smile.

Before he's able to answer, a cold wind tears through the throne room, putting out every candle and knocking Rapunzel's carefully arranged decorations from the walls. The "Happy Birthday Eugene" banner falls from its ropes.

The crowd turns to look towards the entry and there stands Cassandra, with the Moonstone in her black armor, one hand on the frame of the large doorway, slightly hunched over but her head raised up and turning to look over the crowd.

"Cass...?" Rapunzel says uncertainly, stepping forward. She can't believe what she's seeing - Cassandra returned. Rapunzel expected to feel great relief at this moment, but she feels only apprehension. Cassandra's expression is intense, and she doesn't look at Rapunzel when Rapunzel speaks.

"Cassandra!" Another voice rings out in the sudden quiet of her arrival. Rapunzel turns to see the Captain stepping out from the gathered Coronans, walking towards the doorway. Rapunzel sees an array of emotions play out on his usually stoic face: shock, relief, confusion, and finally anger. His brow furrows and he grits his teeth for a moment before continuing: "Why have you turned your back on the princess?!"

"Captain, wait-" Rapunzel starts, putting her hand out. "Let's just-"

Cassandra walks into the throne room slowly. She continues looking at each Coronan in turn in silence. She doesn't turn towards Rapunzel or the Captain.

Rapunzel watches her, unable to understand what she's doing. The assembled crowd feels uneasy at her presence, moving back from her and each individual looking away when Cassandra stares at them. Pascal hides in Rapunzel's hair, and even Maximus and Fidella step anxiously, their hooves clattering against the tiled floor and their ears swiveling with nervousness.

Rapunzel steels herself. She shouldn't feel afraid - this is Cassandra, her best friend. "You're back," Rapunzel says, mustering a smile and stepping towards her. "I've- I've missed you, Cassandra."

"What does she want? Why does she appear now? Is she here to apologize, or for a fight? She's probably here for a fight!" Lance stage-whispers to Eugene behind Rapunzel. Eugene hushes and elbows him.

Cassandra still won't look at her. Rapunzel feels the smile dropping from her face. "Cass?" She asks.

Finally Cassandra's looked through every face in the crowd on one side of the throne room, and her eyes turn next onto Rapunzel in the center. Rapunzel opens her mouth to speak, but after the allotted one second per face, Cassandra looks away, her expression unchanging.

Rapunzel's voice catches in her throat. Cassandra had looked at her so blankly, the way she might have looked at a wall. She looks now at Eugene, and then Lance.

Rapunzel swallows, and steps forward again. "Cass," she says more seriously, dropping her overly friendly front. "Wh-"

"You," Cassandra snarls, her face twisting with rage, looking past Rapunzel. Rapunzel turns and sees her parents standing by the thrones on the dias.

Rapunzel looks back towards Cassandra just in time to see her swipe her arm up and across her body, and Rapunzel hears the crashing and cracking of stone tiles as a set of black rock spikes shoots from the ground to launch the birthday cake table across the room, and other spikes start tearing out from the ground around the throne room. Cassandra leaps forward, impossibly fast, nearly clipping both Rapunzel and Eugene as she lands on a spike she summoned and throws herself forward towards the dias.

It all happens too quickly for Rapunzel to act. She sees Cassandra collide with Frederic, knocking him far back into the wall. She hears screams behind her from the crowd, terrified by the spikes. She hears a guard shout, "We have to protect the king and queen!"

Arianna rushes to Frederic's side, kneeling by him to help him rise as Cassandra walks towards him.

Cassandra holds a hand in front of her, clenching her fist and summoning black spikes all around them.

"You... will... PAY," Cassandra snarls, lifting her right arm in its terrible clawed gauntlet.

She tries to lunge towards Frederic's chest, but her arm is caught by a lasso of blonde hair and she's pulled aggressively backwards, making her sprawl onto the ground in front of the throne dias.

Coronan guards reach the dias. They put themselves between Cassandra and Rapunzel's parents as Rapunzel yells, "Cass, stop! What are you doing?!"

Cassandra snarls something Rapunzel can't make out. She untangles her arm from Rapunzel's hair and stands, breathing heavily, her face still twisted with hate. She turns back towards Frederic, staring at him through the array of guards standing and pointing their halberds at her.

"You… you took her," Cassandra breathes. "You ruined her. And now…" Her voice shakes as it intensifies. "You will suffer for what you've done."

"W-what are you talking about?!" Rapunzel cries. "Cass, stop, this has to be some kind of misunderstanding-"

Cassandra swipes her arms outwards and black rocks shoot from the ground to knock the Coronan guards aside.

Before she's able to leap again towards the king, she's hit from the side by the Captain, who throws her to the ground. As she rises, he draws his sword.

"Cassandra, I command you to surrender!" He shouts at her.

Cassandra's face shifts from shock to rage again. "Never," she snarls, and leaps towards him. She lashes out at him with her clawed gauntlet and he dodges, but he doesn't use his sword to strike at her. He holds his sword up to block one of Cassandra's attacks, and the blade shatters. While he's surprised and left defenseless, Cassandra throws her hand out and grabs his breastplate with her claws, piercing through the metal. Holding him by his armor, she turns and throws him across the room.

"Get your father out of here, blondie," Eugene says next to her, drawing his sword. "I've got this."

Rapunzel looks over towards her parents as Eugene rushes at Cassandra. She sees Quirin and some of the pub thugs helping Frederic and Arianna onto Fidella. She sees Lance, Varian, Angry, and Catalina directing the other Coronans' escape from the throne room. She sees Maximus with a sword standing between Cassandra and her parents.

Eugene's sword swings down towards Cassandra, and she holds her forearms up and crossed in front of her. Eugene's sword shatters, and looking at the hilt in his hand he starts, "Her armor is made from the r-" but he's cut off by Cassandra twisting to kick him in the chest, sending him flying.

"Cass, wait! Please, let's just, talk-" Rapunzel cries desperately.

"I am through waiting," Cassandra snarls. "I've waited for too long!" She turns towards the dias again, and Max angrily snorts, pointing his sword towards her.

Gritting her teeth, Rapunzel throws her hair again, wrapping around Cassandra's torso. "I don't want to fight you, Cass!"

Cassandra whirls around towards her. "Then don't fight," she responds with venom in her voice. But Rapunzel's diversion worked - Fidella takes off through a side door from the throne room, carrying Rapunzel's parents away.

Cassandra snaps around at the sound of hooves galloping on tile. Her armor glows blue for a second before shooting out a blast, throwing Rapunzel's hair from her.

Max lunges towards her. Cassandra shatters his sword, but after evading her claws he turns and kicks her, sending her across the room into a wall. Eugene grabs a frying pan from Max's saddlebag.

"Rapunzel!" He calls, and throws the pan towards her. She catches it and moves towards Cassandra at the base of the wall, pointing her frying pan towards her.

Cassandra looks up, baring her teeth and glaring at Rapunzel.

Rapunzel swallows, and tries again: "Cass, please, this is not who you are."

"You don't get to tell me who I am," Cassandra snarls, and she leaps for Rapunzel.

Rapunzel knows what to expect - Cassandra fought with the clawed gauntlets, only close range, so she dodges back while throwing her hair out at Cassandra's legs to unbalance her. Rapunzel strikes her with the pan, knocking her to the ground again.

"Look at me, you know me, Cassandra," Rapunzel tells her earnestly, desperately. "This has to stop now. Whatever it is you're going through, we'll fix it together, just like we've always done." She holds a hand towards her.

Cassandra pushes herself up from the ground with her hands, her face towards the floor. Rapunzel sees her hands ball into fists, and Cassandra roars wordlessly, the ground shaking as spikes shoot through the floor all around her. She throws herself upright with spikes under her hands, and turns towards Rapunzel to fight her again.

Coronan guards come to Rapunzel's aid with halberds. Then Max, Eugene, Lance, Quirin, and the pub thugs with swords; then Varian, Angry and Catalina, Varian and Angry throwing rocks loosed by the spikes and Catalina turning into her wolf form to grab Cassandra and throw her across the room. Rapunzel sees Cassandra summoning more spikes to knock the Coronans aside, Cassandra moving impossibly fast to dodge swords and halberds, throwing her claws out to destroy the weapons; Cassandra shooting spikes from the ground and ceiling to cage Catalina. Then Cassandra grabs Rapunzel and throws her, and she feels her body strike a wall. The last thing she hears is a wordless, enraged roar as the castle shakes, and then everything goes dark.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

When Rapunzel regains consciousness, she hears voices before she opens her eyes.

Varian's voice. "It's not much, but if we hit her directly, it could stop her."

Angry's voice. "I'm good with a slingshot, I could definitely get her!"

A sigh. Quirin's voice. "I just don't think it would work, son. You don't understand the strength of the Moonstone. This isn't just a few spikes, it's a power that-"

Rapunzel opens her eyes while he speaks, and next to her Eugene says, "Wait everyone, she's awake."

Rapunzel puts a hand up to her head. "What…" she starts, trying to remember where she is and why.

The memories hit her with a shock like being thrown into cold water. "Cassandra," Rapunzel says. "What happened to Cassandra?"

She sees herself surrounded by her friends in a home she doesn't recognize. Anxious looks are exchanged for a moment before Lance says, "Who's gonna tell her?"

"Ah, Sunshine," Eugene begins, reaching for her hand. "I don't know if you should-"

Rapunzel sits up and pulls her hand away. "Where is Cassandra?"

Eugene sighs. "She's not here. We're in Old Corona. She-" he cuts off, looking like he's searching for words.

"She destroyed the city and now we're hiding from her," Angry fills in.

Rapunzel frowns, trying to shake her head to clear it. "No- no, that's not possible-"

"It is, your highness," Quirin tells her. "The castle and city are destroyed. She's attacking the mainland now. We have no idea how to stop her."

"I think one of my alchemical reactions could-" Varian starts, but Quirin rests his hand on Varian's shoulder, and he quiets.

"W-where are my mom and dad?" Rapunzel asks, remembering they were a target of Cassandra's rage.

"They're here too," Eugene tells her. "They're in the other room. We think some of your dad's ribs might be broken. But they're okay," he rushes to add.

"We- we have to do something," Rapunzel starts, but she's interrupted by Lance.

"Princess," he starts, his usual jovial manner solemn. "Were you in the same fight as us? We don't stand a chance against Cass."

"No- we don't need to attack her," Rapunzel answers. "I-I just need to talk to her. Listen, I know Cassandra is dangerous, but she's also our friend."

"That wasn't Cassandra," a gravelly voice says from across the room. Rapunzel looks over and sees the Captain sitting at the edge of a hearth, his head in his hands. He slowly looks up towards Rapunzel, and Rapunzel thinks of how fragile he looks outside of his armor.

"What- what do you mean? Of course it was her, she-" Rapunzel stutters.

"With all due respect, your highness," the Captain interrupts gravely. "I raised Cassandra. That rage, and hate, is something I've never seen. That person wasn't my daughter."

Rapunzel hesitates, staring at him, seeing the grief in his eyes. "I-I can't accept that," Rapunzel finally answers. "Whatever she's done, whatever she's feeling, she's still Cass."

Her friends draw back as Rapunzel swings her legs over the edge of the bed and stands shakily. "No matter what happens… I will never stop trying to get through to her. I won't give up on her."

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Notes:

Most of the dialogue in this chapter is from various parts of the series' season 3, shuffled around.

Chapter 14: Revelations

Third Month

Roughly three months into her Underworld stay, Rapunzel comes back to her room after working on repairing homes in the capital and she finds M-C standing on her balcony, looking out at the view. She joins her to look out over the kingdom and is about to say some small talk to start a conversation, when M-C speaks.

"It was revenge."

Rapunzel looks over at her, confused. "What?"

"It was revenge," M-C says again, and turns to Rapunzel. Her expression becomes distraught. "They took you, and used you, and changed you-" M-C gets more distressed as she speaks. "And now…" Tears start to build in her eyes, and her voice catches as she looks away. "You don't even remember me."

Rapunzel stares at her with wide eyes. Tears are rolling down M-C's cheeks - Rapunzel's never seen Cassandra cry before. But what is she talking about?

"Cass, wait, it's okay," Rapunzel tries to reassure her, putting her hands out. "Of course I remember you! And no one… took me. What are you talking about?" Rapunzel feels anxious. Is Cassandra getting confused with a dream again?

"No, you don't! Not from before," M-C says, pulling away. "They took you. They took you and now you're different and you don't remember." Her voice breaks as she speaks.

"Cass," Rapunzel tries to speak gently. "You're confused. You're the one who has trouble remembering things, not me. But that's okay! We have your journal to help you. And no one took me."

"He did!" M-C's voice escalates as she cries. "He ordered his men and they took you! And I couldn't find you, I looked for so long but he had changed you… And you didn't look for me." M-C's body is shaking slightly, and she puts a hand to her face. "You didn't remember so you didn't look for me."

Rapunzel puts her hands on M-C's arms to try to placate her. She studies M-C's face, trying to figure out what she's talking about. Surely she's stuck on a dream. "I remember you, Cass. I have never forgotten you, okay? Well, there was that one time, with the memory wand - but that was only a day, besides that I have never forgotten you." Rapunzel frowns in thought. "Who is 'he'?"

M-C's face twitches with anger, but she doesn't pull away from Rapunzel. "That terrible man with the sun." She turns her tearstained face to look at the kingdom again. "The man ruling the rotten kingdom of sun."

Rapunzel realizes who she's talking about. "My father? Are you talking about… Corona?" She follows M-C's gaze to look out at the kingdom, and looks back at her. "Cass, my father never took me anywhere. You're-"

"He did!" M-C yells, shaking her off. "You don't remember! It was before… Before everything. Everything you know. Because you forgot, he changed you. I looked everywhere and only found you after. You were different, you didn't recognize me." M-C wipes more tears from her face. "You forgot me."

Rapunzel doesn't understand, but she recognizes that telling Cassandra that she's imagining her upset isn't getting her anywhere. She tries to think of what Cassandra had been telling her - her father ordered men to take Rapunzel somewhere, they changed Rapunzel so she wouldn't remember anything, which happened before everything she knows -

"Cass," Rapunzel says with growing realization. "Are you talking about the Sundrop?"

"That's not your name," M-C mutters. "They just called you that."

"Why would you destroy Corona because my father took the Sundrop? And what do you mean you were looking for it?" Rapunzel feels even more confused now. Cassandra was four when he took the Sundrop.

"I tried to follow," M-C says, refusing to look at Rapunzel. "I tried to follow but your roots were gone. I didn't know what happened but I know now. He took you and changed you so I destroyed it all. But I don't know how to get you back." M-C's body shakes again with suppressed sobs. "I- I tried to bring you to me, and everything went wrong. It all broke and everything went wrong."

Tried to bring me to her? What is she-

Rapunzel recoils in horror as she realizes. "You're the Moonstone."

"That's not my name," M-C mutters, wiping her tears away.

"You're alive?" Rapunzel gasps.

"You don't remember," M-C says again, upset.

"What have you done to my friend?" Rapunzel demands intensely. She can hardly breathe. Cassandra's being possessed.

M-C looks at her, confused. "I am your friend."

"No you're not!" Rapunzel shouts at her. "Cassandra would never do the things you made her do! You're- you're not my friend, you're a monster!"

M-C's expression changes - she looks like Rapunzel just slapped her. She doesn't say anything, tears still falling from her eyes.

"Let go of her!" Rapunzel demands. "Stop possessing my friend!"

M-C puts her hands to her head and sinks to her knees, staring at the ground. She doesn't respond.

"Let her go! What is wrong with you, you monster!"

"There's nothing wrong with me," she whispers.

"You destroyed my home!" Rapunzel yells, gesturing behind them. "You're possessing my friend! There's nothing but things wrong with you!"

M-C doesn't respond. She hugs her chest, and her eyes stare at nothing in front of her.

Rapunzel yells at her more, but receives no responses. M-C's gone catatonic - entirely unresponsive.

Rapunzel kneels in front of M-C. "Cass," she says quietly, touching M-C's cheek. "I know you're in there, Cass. You have to fight this thing. You have to get rid of it. I know you can, you're so strong." Rapunzel's shock gives way to grief, and tears fill her eyes. "For me and Corona you have to fight it, Cass. I know you can win."

M-C doesn't answer. Rapunzel looks at the stone in her armor, and back up at M-C's eyes. She could touch it right now and end it, all of it - she thinks. But she can't give up on Cassandra. She's in there somewhere. The stone had messed her up badly but she's in there.

She presses her forehead against M-C's. "You're so strong and so brave Cass, I know you will win."

M-C leans just barely into Rapunzel's hand on her cheek. She blinks, and her eyes look up into Rapunzel's.

Rapunzel's breath catches. Did it work?

But she doesn't say anything. She closes her eyes.

Rapunzel doesn't know what to do. The sun is past the horizon, and she was going to make dinner for herself and Cassandra. She takes a heavy blanket from her room, and sits next to M-C, putting it around both of them.

Despite how cold her armor is, Rapunzel pushes herself against M-C. She holds her friend as the clouds begin to dissipate to reveal stars.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel has plenty of time to think while she sits against an unresponsive M-C.

She mentally reviews what the Moonstone said. It destroyed Corona and attacked Rapunzel's father in revenge for what he did to the Sundrop. The Sundrop must have had a mind and memories like the Moonstone did, but it was changed and became part of Rapunzel.

Rapunzel frowns. That's… unfortunate. And creepy. Did it die when it was made into an elixir? The Moonstone seemed convinced that she still is the Sundrop, just without memories. Which… Rapunzel had considered herself the Sundrop, until now. But now she knows it was a living being of some kind, and she's human. ...At least, she thinks she's human.

Rapunzel squeezes her eyes shut tightly. Obviously she's human - she was born to her parents, and she was conceived before they used the Sundrop. She just has its powers, somehow. The Sundrop being is dead.

All along they had been assuming that the Sundrop and Moonstone were just some kind of magic essences - one in the form of a flower, one in a rock. Healing and decay, light and dark - complimentary powers. The thought that they were alive and conscious in some way is insane. And now that conscious being is possessing Cassandra.

Rapunzel takes a deep breath. So the Moonstone and Sundrop were connected in some way before the Sundrop was dug up. The Moonstone knew when the Sundrop was taken, and looked for it. It said it had tried to follow the Sundrop's roots, but the roots were gone. Rapunzel remembers the spike-strewn landscapes they had traveled across, how sometimes they would encounter entire villages that had been decimated by the black rocks… that's what it must mean by looking for her. It sent spikes everywhere in search. And it caused so much destruction. Was it even aware of that? Could it even comprehend it?

And then it found her. Rapunzel remembers the ways the spikes would chase her when she was near, and reacted so explosively to her the first few times she touched them. It said that she was different and didn't recognize it - is that what it meant? Would the Sundrop being have done something else with the rocks to connect with them? And then when the Moonstone realized it couldn't get through to her, it laid the spikes to point to it. To lead her to it.

And she followed. Like a fool. Rapunzel wonders if Adira knew that the Moonstone is alive. Possibly - she certainly had no problem with keeping information from Rapunzel. Rapunzel scowls. She should have trusted Cassandra in the Great Tree and not have listened to Adira.

Then something happened to Cassandra in the Dark Kingdom. She said she'd seen the castle before and that the Moonstone chose her, and her blood had made the rock gates recede. Rapunzel shivers. It must have been using some kind of mind powers on Cassandra already, even before she grabbed it. But why?

And then everything went wrong. The Moonstone said "it all broke", which sounds a lot like how Cassandra described her mind problems weeks ago-

Rapunzel abruptly realizes that might not have been Cassandra. How often had she unknowingly been speaking to the Moonstone? There were plenty of times that she was sure it was Cassandra she was talking to - the pieces she could remember, the things she'd say to Rapunzel - it all felt like her, albeit very troubled. But the other things, the unexplainable remarks about things that never happened - those must have been the Moonstone. The first time she spoke about something that never happened was when she was attacking Rapunzel's father, and now Rapunzel knows that was the Moonstone talking about something that did happen. Which means the rest likely were too…

The cosmic garden. Cassandra had said twice it was like the one they had. Was the Moonstone speaking to the Sundrop? But what does that mean? What even are they? Or were, in the Sundrop's case. Rapunzel remembers what Adira said about the powers falling from the sky. Were they beings from space? The garden… it looked like a view through her telescope, far away from earth. "Like the one we had".

Rapunzel feels lightheaded. So Cassandra is periodically being possessed by an alien rock. That accidentally broke both of their minds to pieces. And the alien rock is convinced that Rapunzel is its alien friend who can't remember anything.

"What the heck do I do with this," Rapunzel whispers against M-C. She starts thinking about what Adira had told her - that the Moonstone was a destructive force seeking out the Sundrop, the darkness to its light, and once they were reunited the world would be saved. That Rapunzel had to grab the Moonstone because she was the Sundrop. That the joining of the two powers could release a huge blast of energy. And that's it. And Adira herself even admitted that these were speculations on her part.

"Well the Moonstone and Sundrop are definitely connected, we know that for sure," Rapunzel mutters to herself. They were obviously close, the Moonstone was a wreck about the Sundrop disappearing. It destroyed two kingdoms and over a dozen villages in its anger and desperation. Adira presumed from the wasteland it created and the spikes it was sending out that it would tear apart the world seeking the Sundrop. Rapunzel doesn't doubt it.

But what will it do now? Its mind is broken and it keeps trying to possess Cassandra. Why? To try to talk to her?

Maybe Rapunzel can bargain with it. She'll offer her Sundrop powers for it to take if it lets go of Cassandra. Rapunzel frowns. But it doesn't want the magic - it wants its friend back, and its friend is dead. Right?

Rapunzel considers how Cassandra herself seems able to use the Moonstone's powers the way Rapunzel can use the Sundrop's powers. Is it possible that what the Moonstone said is true? That there's some kind of spirit inside her too that just can't remember anything?

As creepy as that is, Rapunzel thinks that would be a better scenario than the Moonstone learning that its friend is gone for good. Rapunzel's pretty certain its ensuing breakdown would destroy... everything.

Wondering what the Moonstone can remember of itself, Rapunzel grabs the satchel at M-C's hip to take out her journal. She feels slightly guilty at the invasion of privacy, but she dismisses it, justifying herself with the bizarre circumstances. She flips through the journal looking for anything the Moonstone might have written or drawn but only finds memories from Cassandra, written out in her neat handwriting - and illustrations of intricate geometric patterns like the ones M-C engraved into her crystal flowers, sometimes overlapping with Cassandra's written passages, beautiful but otherwise meaningless.

Rapunzel finally flips to the first page and sees the illustration M-C had made all those weeks ago when Rapunzel first offered her the journal. Rapunzel remembers how badly she had wanted to look at the drawing while M-C worked on it, and how disappointed she was when M-C closed the journal without sharing it.

With wide eyes she looks over it now: M-C had drawn a copy of the illustration she had paused on for so long when looking through Rapunzel's journal, of Rapunzel kneeling in front of the black rocks and reaching towards them the night she and Cassandra went beyond the walls. But instead of spikes of black rock in front of her, it was Cassandra, kneeling identically to Rapunzel, their bodies mirrored, Cassandra's hand reaching out to touch Rapunzel's.

Rapunzel stares at this for at least as long as M-C had looked at the illustration in Rapunzel's journal. She has no idea how to parse it. Surely this was a drawing done by the Moonstone, not Cassandra. But why would it draw Cassandra there?

Rapunzel closes the journal. Since it offered her no further information on the Moonstone, she realizes she'll have to try a different route.

She decides to fall back on a tried and true method.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Cassandra doesn't like Rapunzel demanding things from her and insisting she talk when she doesn't want to. But this isn't Cassandra - it's the Moonstone.

Rapunzel gets up and pulls the blanket away from M-C. M-C doesn't move, still crumpled on the ground - kneeling with her arms clasped tightly around her chest in a hug and her eyes closed as if she's asleep or meditating. Rapunzel grabs her under the arms and drags her towards the window to her room.

It takes some work, but she's done this before: soon she has M-C tied to her desk chair. She picks up a bucket she fetched before using her hair as restraints, and throws water into M-C's face.

M-C snaps out of her unresponsive state immediately. She jolts and her eyes open, and she struggles for a moment against the bindings before looking up and seeing Rapunzel in front of her, holding a frying pan pointed at her face.

"Are you the Moonstone?" Rapunzel demands.

"Th-that's not my name," M-C says, still in shock from how she's drenched and restrained.

Rapunzel squints. The Moonstone. "What is your name, then?"

"Cassandra," M-C answers, confused.

Rapunzel scowls at her. "No it's not," she says. "What's your real name, not the name of my friend."

M-C tilts her head, distressed. "I am your friend."

"What was your name before you were Cassandra?" Rapunzel asks through her teeth.

"Oh," M-C says. She thinks for a moment. "It wasn't words. There isn't really a way to tell you… here," she responds, her hands gesturing vaguely from where they're tied to the chair.

"What are you?" Rapunzel asks.

M-C thinks for a moment. "A knight," she answers. "Your friend."

Rapunzel rubs her temple with her free hand. "What were you before you were Cassandra," she clarifies again.

"Oh," M-C says again. "I don't remember. I was stuck. I'm not stuck anymore."

"Why did you possess my friend?" Rapunzel asks. "What did you do to her?"

M-C frowns. "I am your-"

"Why did you possess the body you are in now that you were not in before," Rapunzel says, ready to pan this rock.

"I didn't," M-C answers, distressed again.

"Yes you did!" Rapunzel yells. "You were a rock and now you're controlling my friend's very human body!"

"I always had this body," M-C answers, confused and alarmed by Rapunzel's outburst.

Rapunzel puts her hand to her face again. This is getting her nowhere, and she knows from earlier that insisting the Moonstone is mistaken - or lying? - will not get her anywhere. She lowers her frying pan.

"Who am I?" Rapunzel asks.

"Rapunzel," M-C answers.

"Am I the Sundrop?"

"That's not your name."

"What is my name?"

"R-"

"What was my name before I was Rapunzel."

"Oh," M-C says. "It wasn't words."

"So you think I was also…" Rapunzel gestures vaguely at M-C, "whatever it is you are."

"No, we're different," M-C tells her.

Rapunzel frowns. The Sundrop and Moonstone aren't the same type of being? "Different how?"

"You're Rapunzel, and I'm Cassandra."

"You are literally, somehow, impossibly, more annoying than Calliope."

Rapunzel puts down her frying pan, walks over to her bookcase, and grabs a large clipboard and paper she'd use for figure drawings. She walks back to M-C and gives her a visual: she draws two parallel horizontal lines. She draws a tick mark near the right end of both lines, and labels the end part of the top line "Cassandra" and the end part of the bottom line "Rapunzel."

"Okay, you see this? These lines are us. You're the top one. See this end section? This is where you're Cassandra. The same for me on the bottom line. Now tell me what the sections before Cassandra and Rapunzel are."

"It wasn't words," M-C answers. "I told you that."

"You said our names weren't words," Rapunzel corrects her. "But what were we?"

"I don't remember. We were stuck." M-C's voice becomes sulking. "You don't remember more than me."

"But we were some kind of… similar, magic... things," Rapunzel says. "People called us the Sundrop and the Moonstone."

"Yes, but that's not our names," M-C answers, still sulking.

Rapunzel sighs. "Well, that's what I'm going to call us, okay? For that section on the line before we were Cassandra and Rapunzel." As she lowers the visual, Rapunzel frowns. "You keep saying we were stuck. What do you mean?"

"We couldn't move. We were stuck." She shifts in her restraints. "Not like I am now, it was worse." She goes back to sulking. "You got unstuck but you didn't look for me because you didn't remember me. Then I got unstuck but everything went wrong."

Rapunzel's eyebrows draw together. "Wait, is that why you took Cassandra's body? You wanted to get… unstuck like me?"

"I am Cassandra," M-C tells her.

Rapunzel drags her hands down her face. She decides to tackle this again. "Okay. You were just talking about being stuck. Because you were a rock. Right? And now you're unstuck, because you're in a person. Are you with me so far?"

M-C blinks. "Yes."

"So, therefore, you turned from a rock into a person."

"Yes."

"Which means that you took Cassandra's body."

"I am Cassandra."

"Why do you think this," Rapunzel asks, intensely, wringing her hands so she doesn't physically smack this rock.

"I am!" M-C tells her. "It's my name! Everyone called me it." She pauses for a moment. "Or Cass. I am also Cass."

"Listen," Rapunzel begins. "I only called you Cassandra and Cass because I thought you were her. Same for all the other Coronans who spoke to you before you drove them out. You're not actually Cassandra. I shouldn't have called you that. You're the Moonstone."

M-C thinks about this intently for a few moments. Rapunzel watches her expectantly - did she get through to it?

"But I'm Cassandra now."

"No you aren't!" Rapunzel yells at her again. "You think you're her, but you're not! You're just possessing her!"

"No, I'm Cassandra." M-C tells her. "I'm sure. I didn't know for a while but now I'm sure."

Rapunzel puts her hand to her face and takes a deep breath. She decides to go back to getting more information about the Moonstone. "Where are you from?"

"Corona."

Rapunzel cannot believe she fell into that pitfall again so quickly. "Where were you from before you were Cassandra," she repeats.

"Oh," M-C says. "I don't remember."

"Ancient documents said that you and the Sundrop fell from the sky," Rapunzel presses her.

M-C glances up. "Maaaaybe?" She says uncertainly, looking back at Rapunzel.

Rapunzel is receiving impressively little information from her interrogation. "You made that garden of the crystal flowers that look like stars. You said it was one like we had. What… is that?"

"It's embarrassing. I should break it. It's a very poor imitation," M-C tells her.

"You mentioned that. But what is it imitating?"

"The garden you made," M-C answers her.

Now they were getting somewhere. "And where was this garden?"

"Home," M-C responds.

She is so close. "And where is home?"

"Corona."

Rapunzel desperately wants to pan her.

"Give me a moment," Rapunzel says, and she walks over to her bed to grab a pillow to scream into it. She puts it back and returns.

"You said I don't remember you," Rapunzel says, beginning her new line of questioning. "What did you mean?"

M-C sulks again. "You don't remember me from before."

"What do you remember from before?" Rapunzel asks somewhat accusingly.

"We were stuck, but we were together…" M-C begins. "Then the terrible man took you and your roots went away and I couldn't find you. I looked for you and when I found you, you were different. He changed you and you don't remember me."

Rapunzel frowns. "How were we together? You were hundreds of miles away from where the Sundrop was."

"You held onto me under the ground. We were together," M-C asserts matter-of-factly.

Rapunzel is skeptical. "So the Sundrop's roots spread all the way to the Dark Kingdom? From that tiny flower?"

M-C thinks for a moment. "Maybe not roots like you're thinking of. More of a… matrix? Made of very very small parts. Reaching all throughout the ground until we found each other. It's like the matrix I have all over, so I can make my rocks grow."

Rapunzel feels uneasy. "What do you mean, a matrix you have everywhere to make your rocks grow?"

"It's very small. You can't see it. I can't see it either but I can feel it." M-C tries to gesture again with her hand but fails as it is tied to a chair. "Little structures through the ground and in walls, very very small. And then I can choose where and how the rocks grow. You had the same thing but roots. When our matrices found each other we made the roots and rocks and you held onto me and we were together."

Little structures… through the ground and walls? Everywhere? "Ohhh my God that's freaky," Rapunzel says and puts her hands up to smooth her hair. She takes a deep breath. "Okay. You said we were together. What does that… mean? Were you just holding each other and… sensing each other... or did you and the Sundrop talk?"

"Not talk like we're doing now," M-C answers.

"But something similar?" Rapunzel presses.

M-C thinks. "No," she answers. "There weren't words. Words are new. But we'd show each other things and play games. You're very clever." M-C's expression becomes upset. "It was so lonely without you."

For the first time, Rapunzel feels a twinge of sympathy for the rock. It must have been awful to be alone and panicking for almost two decades. "I'm sorry," she says, and she means it.

"It's not your fault," M-C answers. Her expression darkens. "It's that terrible man's fault."

Rapunzel elects to push the conversation away from its anger. "So… What is your relationship to the Sundrop?"

M-C stares blankly at her. "I'm your friend. I told you."

Rapunzel squints. "Are you talking about Cassandra's relationship to Rapunzel right now, or the Moonstone's relationship to the Sundrop?"

"...Both?" M-C answers hesitantly, as if she's nervous of saying the wrong thing.

Rapunzel sighs.

"You said I didn't recognize you," Rapunzel says, shifting tracks again. "Was that when you were chasing me with rocks?"

"Yes," M-C responds.

"Why did the rocks explode the first few times I touched them?"

"I don't know. You didn't recognize me. You were scared," M-C answers.

"Well, I was definitely scared. But I didn't blow them up on purpose." Rapunzel frowns. "During the fight with Varian, the rocks attacked the automatons when I touched the spikes. Did you do that?"

"Yes," M-C says. "I wanted to help you. My sword didn't work on them. Only the rocks were strong enough to pierce the metal."

Rapunzel feels uneasy at her mention of a sword. "You were already in Cassandra's head then?"

"I'm-"

"Never mind," Rapunzel cuts her off. "Then you pointed the rocks towards the Dark Kingdom so I'd follow."

"That's right," M-C answers. "You remember these parts, so I don't know why you're asking me about them."

"Just want to cover all my bases," Rapunzel mutters. She continues, "You said that everything broke. What do you mean?"

M-C frowns. "Everything went wrong. It broke. Now there are a bunch of pieces and I can't fit them together. It wasn't supposed to go like this…"

"What was it supposed to go like?" Rapunzel asks.

M-C stares blankly at her again. "I'm not sure. Not like this. You're better at organics than me. What was it supposed to go like?"

"You're- you're asking me?" Rapunzel asks in disbelief.

"Yes," M-C answers.

"Well- I don't know. I don't know how I got the Sundrop's power, I just sort of… did." Rapunzel frowns. "I was kinda hoping you'd know."

"I don't know a lot of things," M-C notes. "Because everything went wrong."

"You can say that again," Rapunzel mutters. "Well, you're not the only one who broke," she says, looking away and feeling a wave of sadness hit her. "Cassandra's memories are all over the place too." She knows that she'll get the Moonstone's usual response to this, but she says it anyway.

"Why don't you believe I'm Cassandra?" M-C asks.

Well, at least that was a variation on what Rapunzel had expected she'd say. Rapunzel looks back at her wearily. "I just know."

"Well, I know I am Cassandra," M-C responds. "And since I'm me and you're not me, I know more about me than you."

Rapunzel's eyes narrow. "If you're so certain then prove it," she says. "Prove to me that you're her."

"How?" M-C asks, and she scowls. "It seems like you won't believe me no matter what I say or do. You're convinced you know better, as usual," she huffs, looking away from Rapunzel.

Rapunzel stares at her. That… standoffish spark. That's Cassandra. She decides to play a dangerous game and push it. "Maybe I do know better," she responds.

"Oh you would think that. Sure, the girl who spent her whole life in a tower knows better," M-C says sarcastically.

"You're talking to me like I'm Rapunzel!" Rapunzel cries, delighted despite M-C's cutting words.

M-C stares at her. "I've been talking to you like you're Rapunzel this entire time!" She says incredulously. "What is your deal?"

"Cass, how long has this conversation been going? Do you remember when it started?" Rapunzel presses her.

"Like, ten minutes? You threw water on me." M-C answers, still looking at her with an exasperated expression. While Rapunzel processes that Cassandra remembers the conversation despite the Moonstone seeming to be in control, M-C pauses and then scowls. "And you said a lot of mean things to me before that. I just remembered that." With the sound of splintering wood, Rapunzel's desk chair falls apart, broken to pieces by small spikes of black rock as M-C stands. Rapunzel's hair falls away from her. "Jerk."

She turns to leave, but Rapunzel throws her hand out. "Cass, wait. I'm- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I thought…" Rapunzel's brow furrows. "I don't understand what's going on," she says honestly. "I thought you were being possessed."

"I've been telling you this whole time, I am Cassandra," M-C answers. "I was being really nice about answering all your questions, too."

"But…" Rapunzel says, completely at a loss. "But you were talking to me as if I'm the Sundrop. You were upset about things only the Moonstone would be upset about."

"You are the Sundrop," M-C tells her, like it's obvious. "And you're Rapunzel. Like how I'm Cassandra and the Moonstone. You were the one who drew it out," she says, gesturing to Rapunzel's clipboard on the floor.

"Wait, what?" Rapunzel cries in disbelief. "You're- you're both?"

M-C stares at her. "How could you not know that? You were there when I became me! I look different from the ways I looked before!"

Rapunzel can barely process this. "But what- what does that mean? How can you be both?"

M-C lifts her satchel with her journal inside it. "Not well, apparently," she answers flippantly. She drops the satchel, letting it fall back against her hip. "I have no idea how you do it."

"So- you're-" Rapunzel stutters. She doesn't even know what she's going to say. She looks at M-C, distraught confusion across her face. "Huh?"

"As glad as I am to see you as confused as me for once," M-C says, "I'm going to leave now. You were a jerk." She walks past Rapunzel towards her balcony.

"I-I'm sorry Cass," Rapunzel tells her, trying to shake off her shocked daze. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

M-C stops at the window. "You called me a monster," M-C says, without looking back at her. "I was crying and you called me a monster."

"I…" Rapunzel doesn't know what to say. It's true.

M-C reaches for her right hand and snaps the blue bracelet off of her wrist, letting it fall to the ground. She leaps out of Rapunzel's window, landing on the balcony with enough force to crack the tiles under her, and she breaks part of the balcony's railing as she jumps over it. Rapunzel hears a grating screech as M-C uses her claws against the castle's exterior to drop to another part of the castle, and then the crashes of walls being torn apart.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Notes:

M-C opens up to Rapunzel at the beginning here because they'd gotten so close. Rapunzel promptly fucks it up.

But it's not as bad as the scene when M-C shattered Rapunzel's bedroom mirror and lost her entire mind again - this time she's stable enough with a strong enough sense of self and foundation of memories that even when pushed by Rapunzel with so many questions, she's able to keep herself together.

At the end she breaks part of the castle, but she's not fully fallen apart again. She only loses some of her built-up memories - she's mostly just mad.

Chapter 15: Amends

Unfortunately, Rapunzel loses a lot of her good progress with M-C. She's not sure how much M-C remembers, although the guarded glare she gives Rapunzel upon seeing her implies she at least remembers she's upset with her, so Rapunzel doesn't think she's lost everything. But M-C refuses to talk to her, and she stops showing up for occasional meals and for helping Rapunzel in the capital.

Rapunzel tries to apologize when she sees her, but M-C doesn't react and usually disappears immediately upon encountering Rapunzel. Rapunzel is certain she's avoiding her.

Although Rapunzel has some questions answered knowing the Moonstone is sentient and Cassandra's a hybrid of it with pieces from both of their minds, she has far, far more questions now.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel decides she needs something that will act as an olive branch to extend to M-C. But she's inclined to think that a material gift wouldn't work - besides how M-C had communicated distaste for them before, she just broke the bracelet Rapunzel had given her. (Rapunzel fixes it immediately, of course, and keeps it on her at all times in case M-C might ever ask for it back.)

Finally, Rapunzel thinks of something: she decides to restore Cassandra's room. It's an enormous job, of course. The bedroom is literally entirely filled with debris. Rapunzel remembers the job she'd done bringing all of Cassandra's things back into her room when Crowley was trying to get rid of them to turn the room back into a generic servant's quarters, and this would be a much, much greater undertaking.

But she gets to work.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

It's very difficult to clear out several tons of broken castle out of a room. She uses a wheelbarrow to take the stones and cracked wood supports far from the room to dump them.

Rapunzel stops working in the capital to focus entirely on her project. Reconciling with M-C is a top priority for getting the kingdom back at all, anyway.

It's over a week into her work - she'd rarely seen M-C at all, and still had yet to have a conversation - when she pulls out material from the room that causes a large section of the rubble to collapse towards her. She tries to leap back but trips, and feels a bolt of terror knowing she wouldn't even have time to pull her shield around her - but the thick wooden support beam about to smash down on her is stopped. Rapunzel gasps in relief and thinks that it got caught on something else on its way down, but when she looks up she sees M-C standing over her, holding the beam up with one hand. M-C is looking down at Rapunzel, who's covered in dirt and still breathing heavily from fear. They stay like that for a little too long. It's kinda gay

Rapunzel gets out from under the debris, and M-C lowers the wooden beam. Rapunzel breathes a thank you, wondering how she had gotten to her so fast, but as soon as M-C puts down the beam she turns and leaves without a word.

That evening, M-C is in the castle kitchen when Rapunzel goes to make dinner. Rapunzel expects M-C to disappear upon her arrival, but she doesn't. She stands silently, watching Rapunzel. Rapunzel doesn't try to engage with her, and her motions are slow as she cooks for herself as though M-C is a wild animal she doesn't want to scare off. She makes a soup too - one of the mild ones that she used to make for M-C, and leaves a bowl of it across from her on the table she'd turned into an informal dining area for herself in the kitchen.

M-C doesn't move to join her. Rapunzel expected this, although she had hoped otherwise. Just the fact that she hadn't left yet was more than she'd gotten in the last two weeks.

Rapunzel decides to try to talk to her, to thank her properly for earlier that day, but M-C leaves immediately when Rapunzel starts to speak to her. Frustrated with herself, Rapunzel finishes her dinner and cleans up, but she leaves the soup out.

The next morning, Rapunzel finds the bowl and spoon cleaned and put away.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel spends the day working at her project again - this time much more carefully, since she's sure she wouldn't be so lucky to have M-C save her again if something happened. Despite working for over a week now, she'd barely reclaimed any space in Cassandra's room. She feels despair start creeping up on her again, and wonders if this project is worth it or even realistic. Maybe she could reconcile with M-C another way. But she keeps working, deciding she'd also spend the day after continuing to work while trying to think of other ideas.

The next day, Rapunzel goes back down to Cassandra's room to keep working, and finds it completely cleared. All the debris had been removed. Large pieces of the walls and ceiling were put back into place, smaller parts substituted with black rock. The splinters of what used to be Cassandra's armoire, bed, bookcases, and other furniture were left among the thick layer of rock dust that hadn't been swept. Linens and books were in tatters on the floor and the sad bent metals of Cassandra's weapon collection lay among the armoire's remains. Miscellaneous possessions that Rapunzel had so painstakingly returned to Cassandra's empty room months ago were left strewn about as well, crushed or shattered or snapped.

Rapunzel walks in, unable to believe what she's seeing. The room had been repaired. Not anything in it, but the rubble was taken out and the structure put back together.

"You almost died, but you came back," M-C's voice comes from behind her. Rapunzel whirls around to see her standing in the doorway. She feels so grateful to hear Cassandra's voice for the first time in weeks.

"I-" Rapunzel starts. "Yeah. I guess I did."

M-C's eyes narrow at her and she walks a few steps into the room. "Why?"

All of Rapunzel's carefully planned apologies evaporate from her mind. "I wanted to show you I was sorry for what I did," she says honestly.

M-C crosses her arms, then gestures with one hand towards the ceiling. "And you intended to do that by, what, killing yourself? A little dramatic."

Rapunzel laughs weakly. "Well, you know me. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing." She clears her throat and gives a serious answer. "I was trying to remove all the debris from your bedroom so you could have it back. The dying wasn't part of the plan."

M-C frowns and glances around, her eyebrows drawing together.

Rapunzel sees her hesitation. "Do you… remember your room?" She asks.

M-C walks over towards the reassembled hearth and looks at the wrecked armoire. Rapunzel hears her sigh through her nose.

"Um," Rapunzel begins. "This was your fireplace… You'd sit at the edge here to polish your weapons... And this was your storage where you'd keep your weapons and clothes…" She laughs weakly again. "You know, it's really sad to see it all like this, since I had worked so hard to keep it just right for you in case you came back. Old Lady Crowley tried to clear it of your belongings so I had to bring everything back in, and I always left flowers out on your table. I-" Rapunzel looks away. "I had really, really hoped you would come back."

M-C doesn't respond. She just stares down at the wreckage strewn around the hearth. She bends down to pick something out of it, and Rapunzel recognizes the framed painting she'd made of her and Cassandra, the glass cracked.

Rapunzel feels pain in her chest. She remembers the day she painted it and gave it to Cassandra. It was the first gift Cassandra had accepted from her.

M-C glances back up from the painting to look at the rest of the room. "I don't like it here," she says expressionlessly. The pain in Rapunzel's chest worsens - did that one picture spark memories of being miserable in her?

She turns and walks out of the room without saying anything else. But she keeps the painting in her hand.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

The next morning, Rapunzel's not certain whether to keep working on Cassandra's room. She said she didn't like it. Was there any point to fixing it up further? But she liked the painting - Rapunzel thinks. It's possible she took it to destroy it.

Rapunzel shakes her head. She can't let herself think negatively.

Maybe there were other things from Cassandra's room that she would like to have back. Surely there were some things that wouldn't spark bad memories. Rapunzel tries to think of things that would definitely be happy, and that morning she goes through the armoire's wreckage to look for Cassandra's lucky halberd head and her favorite dagger. Cassandra always loved her weapons.

But everything she finds is severely dented or warped. She thinks that if Cassandra saw these, it would mean nothing to her at best and be upsetting to her at worst. Rapunzel keeps looking through the room's remains, but finds nothing she thinks would make M-C happy.

That evening, M-C is in the kitchen again. Rapunzel repeats her process of making food slowly and without acknowledging M-C, trying not to scare her off. When Rapunzel sits down to eat, M-C silently pulls out a chess board and sets it on the table. She dumps a box of chess pieces onto it and sits across from Rapunzel with her bowl. She starts to set up the pieces.

Rapunzel can't believe what she's seeing. It's the first time M-C had tried to play any kind of game with her. And she hadn't even properly apologized. Did M-C forget that she was mad at her?

Rapunzel doesn't want to say the wrong thing, so she doesn't speak as they start to play the game.

Rapunzel is very good at chess. It was one of the things she'd do over and over again in the tower, playing chess with Pascal. She'd best most people in Corona castle easily, but Cassandra was always an engaging challenge for her.

She nearly forgets to eat her dinner, being so caught up in the game. Finally, she moves a piece to place M-C in checkmate. She looks up with a victorious grin and abruptly realizes that beating M-C might set off her anger. But M-C's face is expressionless as she considers the board, assessing all the pieces and where they could move to confirm that she was in checkmate.

"Very clever," M-C says, as if to herself. She stands and takes her bowl and the dishes from in front of Rapunzel, bringing them to the sink.

Rapunzel helps her clean in silence that she hopes feels companionable. When M-C opens her satchel to put the box of chess pieces in, Rapunzel sees the framed painting in her bag next to the journal.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

And without any pomp or circumstance, M-C is her friend again. She starts having dinner with Rapunzel most nights, bringing board and card games she must have salvaged from servants' and guards' quarters or ruined shops in the capital. She goes back to helping Rapunzel rebuild homes in the capital a few days a week.

Rapunzel's not sure how to talk to her. She recognizes that this is probably what M-C had meant when she had wanted conflict to be resolved in her own way in her own time. For Rapunzel, it drives her half crazy not knowing where exactly they stand with each other. But M-C seems to be responding well to her consistently - better, even, than she had before Rapunzel had upset her so badly. So Rapunzel doesn't push her.

She desperately wants to ask M-C about how much she remembers and ask her the long list of questions she still has. But since she doesn't want to scare M-C away again, she falls back on the plan she'd been using since a few days into her stay in Underworld: wait for M-C to talk to her about it first. M-C opened up to her once already with the emotional outburst on the balcony - Rapunzel just wrecked it. Now she just has to wait for them to be close enough and M-C to remember enough to offer Rapunzel information like that again. And next time, Rapunzel knows enough that she won't ruin things when it happens. She hopes.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel asks M-C to go riding with her the way they used to, and they have a race. Rapunzel makes a joke and M-C smiles for the first time in a year. Rapunzel fawns over her smile and M-C stops immediately, as if she was doing something she shouldn't have been doing.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

One dinner Rapunzel notices that M-C keeps staring at something during their card game, and looking down she realizes it's the bracelet around her wrist. Silently, she opens her blue bag and pulls the matching bracelet out, placing it on the table between them. M-C slowly reaches for it and places it on her wrist. Rapunzel is about to ask her if she'd like her to tie it for her, when small pieces of black rock emerge from her gauntlet, grabbing the ends of the bracelet with fine pliers and twisting around like clockwork so fast Rapunzel can't make out the motions. A moment later the structures of black rock are dismissed and the bracelet is tied around M-C's wrist in a complicated knot.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Notes:

In the previous chapter, for the first time M-C had been openly and profoundly vulnerable with Rapunzel, who fucked it up immediately because she had no idea what's going on. So their relationship took a huge hit. M-C snapped off the friendship bracelet, and her baseline towards Rapunzel became negative again.

But, as this chapter shows, M-C doesn't hate Rapunzel. She watches Rapunzel and saves her from dying under the collapsing debris. She sees Rapunzel go back to what she was doing and she's like, what the fuck is this girl doing. Rapunzel explains to her that she's trying to fix Cassandra's bedroom, and M-C realizes that Rapunzel was so devoted to the project because she cares about her. She finds the painting of the two of them that she was so fond of, and those feelings are grounded with it. She doesn't say it, but she forgives Rapunzel. With her memories of playing games with the Sundrop when they were trapped together, she starts playing games with Rapunzel. Having become friends again and now experiencing a standard that she had with the Sundrop when they were together, M-C's baseline towards Rapunzel becomes exceedingly positive.

Chapter 16: Progress

Fourth Month

A few weeks after they reconcile, M-C asks Rapunzel to come with her. They ride on the horse specters to Rapunzel's tower, which has been rebuilt exactly as it was before. In disbelief Rapunzel goes to the top of it to see the interior. M-C tells Rapunzel she remembered how Rapunzel was so sad when she broke it [the Moonstone had destroyed it, Cassandra saw her crying] so she put the pieces back together.

Rapunzel doesn't know what to say. She continues to investigate all the parts of the room and sees they're reassembled perfectly, and waves of very complicated feelings keep hitting her. M-C tells her that when she was putting it back together she wondered what it would've been like if Gothel had brought her there too and they'd grown up together. Uncertain what to say, Rapunzel answers "I probably would've liked the company." M-C tells her that they could pretend, just now, and play together as if they're kids.

Rapunzel breaks down crying. M-C scoops her up and jumps out of the tower, and tells her on the ground that she's sorry and can break it again if Rapunzel wants. Rapunzel tells her that it's okay, that she's glad it's back, but she doesn't want to be there.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

One evening when Rapunzel's cooking in the kitchen, M-C is perched on a black rock, staring at nothing. Rapunzel asks what she's thinking about, and M-C answers that she's looking for stones. Rapunzel looks around at the stone walls and floor and says there are plenty around, and M-C clarifies that she's looking for stones underground. She says she's using black rock far under the surface to find different gemstones from the resistance they offer as her spikes move. Rapunzel is not sure whether to believe her or not.

The next day, M-C gives Rapunzel flowers carved from crystals.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Looking at Monty's destroyed sweetshop, M-C notes it's worse than when the goat rampaged in it. Rapunzel smiles about M-C's memory, but then looks at the sweetshop unimpressed and says that she's going to fix it last. M-C snorts and says, "oookay Raps." Rapunzel can barely contain her excitement at M-C calling her Raps for the first time in over a year.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel feels guilty about how much fun she's been having in Underworld. She feels like she keeps losing sight of her goals - getting the Moonstone and restoring Corona. M-C still has yet to talk to her again about anything related to the Sundrop and Moonstone, and while Rapunzel is still rebuilding parts of the capital, she feels like she's doing it mainly to have a project to work on with M-C so she can spend more time with her. Rapunzel feels badly that while her people are refugees in another kingdom, she's just having fun.

So one day when they're working together, Rapunzel asks what would happen if she touched the stone on M-C's chest.

M-C stares at her blankly and says "probably nothing." Confused, Rapunzel talks about how bringing the Sundrop and Moonstone together was supposed to unite them and create some great power - according to Adira. She says that maybe it would release the Sundrop and Moonstone from both of them.

M-C rolls her eyes at the mention of Adira. She thinks for a moment, and then grabs Rapunzel's hand and puts it on the Moonstone. Rapunzel flinches and closes her eyes, braced for an explosion - but there isn't one. Rapunzel feels her magic rush through her in the same way it did when she touched M-C's skin to check her heartbeat, and her hair begins to glow. But nothing else occurs.

M-C lets go of her hand and shrugs, saying Adira was wrong. She goes back to working.

Rapunzel is very, very confused.

Later, she concludes that if uniting the Sundrop and Moonstone isn't a real goal, then all she can focus on is restoring the kingdom and getting M-C's mind back together.

But Rapunzel wonders if the Sundrop and Moonstone don't react with each other, what do they do with them? How can they get rid of them?

She thinks that maybe a fully functioning M-C would know more about their powers and what to do about them.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel goes up to the star platform another night, unable to sleep, and finds M-C there again. M-C says something about music that Rapunzel doesn't understand, and M-C tells her that there's music coming from the stars. When she tells M-C that there isn't and she's imagining it, M-C tells her to use her magic. Rapunzel closes her eyes and accesses her power, but she feels overwhelmed by it as magic quickly builds in her. She's afraid of it getting out of control or creating a shockwave, and she's about to freak out when M-C pulls her into a hug. Rapunzel immediately feels part of her magic flow out of her, like it finally had somewhere to go, and isn't going to build up until it explodes out of her and ravages her body. Rather than feeling drained, she feels stronger and more in control of her power. Rapunzel clings to M-C.

M-C apologizes to her and says that Rapunzel's magic is scarier than hers. Thinking about the wasteland around them Rapunzel says she's not so sure, and M-C tells her that life is scarier than death.

Still clinging to M-C and with her hair shining, Rapunzel realizes she hears ethereal chimes and sounds she can't identify making gentle melodies that overlap with each other coming from far above her. She looks up, and can't believe what she's hearing.

M-C asks Rapunzel to follow her steps, and they dance to the music under the stars.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel sees M-C drawing the intricate geometric patterns in her journal. Thinking about how the rest of the journal is Cassandra's memories written out, she asks M-C if the designs are a language. She wonders if they're the Moonstone's memories written out.

M-C says it's something between a language and a picture, since it's not words but it conveys information. She adds it's mostly useless, since she keeps forgetting what it means and doesn't think it even works viewed flat on a page. But it's the only way to communicate the things she remembers from before, which are so different from this world she feels it's impossible she'll ever understand it.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel adores the little messenger pigeon she gets to interact with a couple times a week. She's always reluctant to let him fly back out of Underworld, and spends at least an hour giving him treats and petting him and drawing him. She's just so happy to see another creature.

M-C comes by Rapunzel's room one day while the pigeon is there and Rapunzel's adoring him. M-C sees how happy the bird makes her.

The next day, M-'jealous of a bird'-C makes a whole flock of black-rock pigeons for Rapunzel. Rapunzel asks why, and M-C answers that she knows Rapunzel likes birds.

Rapunzel says she's flattered (in truth she finds the mechanical birds with their beady not-alive eyes very unsettling) but she prefers real creatures. M-C is very dejected by this response.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

For the next week, Rapunzel sees less of M-C than usual, and feels sad thinking she pushed her away. But one day M-C appears and tells Rapunzel she wants to show her something that she found. She brings her onto the mainland to a lagoon off the coast, hidden in a sinkhole in the woods. There are glowing sea stars and shiny fish in the water, and M-C tells her that she thought Rapunzel would like to see the animals and lights. Rapunzel is delighted that M-C would go out looking for so long to find animals for her.

Rapunzel wants to swim, but M-C refuses to because of her armor. Rapunzel says she could take it off, and M-C doesn't answer.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C has spent the day intermittently with Rapunzel as Rapunzel goes about doing things, cooking or reading or painting, but she doesn't say much. That evening, after Rapunzel helps her put together another part of the castle, M-C appears in Rapunzel's room. She sits with Rapunzel on her bed and says she's tired. Rapunzel says she can try to sleep, and M-C falls asleep with her head in Rapunzel's lap.

Rapunzel stares at her because she's blinding beautiful. It's definitely gay

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C is agitated when Rapunzel encounters her. Thinking that she's frustrated about her memory problems, Rapunzel tries to calm her down with her book, but M-C throws it away and pushes Rapunzel away from her. She takes off, and in the distance Rapunzel hears huge parts of the castle falling apart. When the last large crash happens, all of the blue torches around Rapunzel go dark. Rapunzel's scared that M-C got hurt and finds her in the ruins, unconscious.

Rapunzel, distraught, pulls M-C out from the debris and looks for injuries. M-C wakes up, and she's furious and yells at Rapunzel "I don't need you"

Rapunzel says she just wants to help, but M-C keeps pushing her away. She tries to get up, but she's too dizzy. She has tears in her eyes while telling Rapunzel "I don't need you". Rapunzel tries to calm her down telling her that she knows M-C doesn't need her, but M-C keeps repeating herself, furious and increasingly upset.

Rapunzel realizes she's telling herself that she doesn't need Rapunzel. Unable to get up, M-C lies miserably on the ground. Rapunzel lays next to her on her side, looking at her. She says "It's okay to need people, Cass. I need you too." M-C doesn't respond, and they lay there looking at each other for a long time.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C comes over to Rapunzel while she's painting a mural in the great hall. When Rapunzel looks over, M-C refuses to meet her eyes. Standing a few steps away she dismisses her black rock armor except for her right gauntlet, and Rapunzel sees her in the tunic and light pants she wore under her metal armor, the fabric of both having various holes and the edges in tatters. She's barefoot and the material of her shirt around the Moonstone for several inches had been burned away. The Moonstone sits at the center of the burn among scar tissue, embedded in her chest. She still refuses to look at Rapunzel.

Rapunzel stands and isn't sure what to say. She walks the couple steps to M-C, who still won't look at her.

Rapunzel wants to touch her but knows she shouldn't. Looking at the Moonstone and the scar tissue she asks, "does it hurt?" and M-C shakes her head.

She can see black lines under M-C's skin near the Moonstone, coming out from the Moonstone like roots of a tree. Rapunzel wonders if it's black rock, and the thought makes her feel slightly ill.

Rapunzel looks down at her feet and says, "you know, being barefoot is kinda my thing," and M-C just barely smiles.

She invites M-C to paint with her, and M-C's hand shakes while she's holding the brush.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C agrees to go swimming with Rapunzel at the lagoon, and she dismisses her armor except for the right gauntlet. She's nervous and barely moves past the shallows, and gets out when she sees all of the animals in the water fleeing from her. Rapunzel uses her magic to keep them warm while they dry, and the sea creatures return to the lagoon.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Every once in a while Rapunzel will wake up in the morning, and she finds M-C asleep on her bed. M-C doesn't sleep often, and when she does it's only once the sun has risen, but when she does go to sleep it's only next to Rapunzel.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel goes up to the star platform another night and sees M-C there. M-C smiles upon seeing her and pulls her into a hug. For a moment she rubs her cheek against Rapunzel's, their skin contact making Rapunzel's magic spike again. When M-C pulls away she's still holding Rapunzel, looking into her eyes. Rapunzel sees in her expression a very deep adoration she'd never seen before - not just on Cassandra, on anyone - and she becomes certain this is the Moonstone looking at the Sundrop.

Rapunzel's heart starts racing. She's terrified and excited. It's a confusing time. But then M-C steps away, saying something about the stars overhead, and they stargaze next to each other for a while. Rapunzel's heart is still racing, and it doesn't calm down even when she later lays down in her bed to sleep.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel, thinking about what M-C had said about Rapunzel's magic being connected to life, puts her hand on a petrified tree and carefully accesses her magic. She feels her magic flow through her hand into the bark, and it turns back into a regular tree, leaves unfurling from its branches.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Notes:

M-C offering to play with Rapunzel together in her tower is very weird, but she's still insane. Like it's hard to tell just with little scene summaries and would definitely be communicated more thoroughly through her behavior and dialogue when fully-written-out, but the girl's still batshit.

"Life is scarier than death" is another one of those things that's corny as hell but I like it so it stays.

M-C is deeply vulnerable again with Rapunzel when she goes to sleep for the first time, which almost immediately causes the negative, explosive, abandonment-trauma-induced-fear reaction of her freaking out and destroying parts of the castle (which is not so much about memory pieces as it is her trying to get rid of something entrenched in her mind - her attachment to Rapunzel). But Rapunzel gets through to her again, and M-C swings back again to vulnerable and trusting of Rapunzel by removing most of her armor for the first time.

Cassandra loved animals, and as M-C becomes more stable, she becomes more sad that animals don't like her.

Chapter 17: Request

Fifth Month

With less than two months before the spring equinox, Rapunzel knows she has to try to make progress on getting Corona back. Many of the homes in the capital are fixed, and she's on great terms with M-C, who despite occasional confusion and bouts of silence seems to be doing very well. Rapunzel, always the optimist, hopes that she'll be fully recovered by spring.

After reviewing some of her memories from Corona with M-C, Rapunzel suggests they open the kingdom up again.

M-C freaks out. She shouts about how she won't let the Coronans back in. She says they'll hate her and drive her away. Rapunzel tries to promise her it wouldn't happen and as their queen she would make sure of it.

M-C tells Rapunzel that she can be queen here and she doesn't need the Coronans. She can stay in the kingdom alone with her and they'd rule over it together. Rapunzel tells M-C she can't do that, she has a responsibility to her people.

M-C shouts about how the Coronans betrayed them and she shouldn't have any sense of duty towards them, they're all terrible and untrustworthy.

Rapunzel, increasingly frustrated and scared thinking that she will have spent her whole time in Underworld without making any progress, responds, "Cass, the only person in Corona who's ever betrayed me is you."

M-C is furious and upset and crying and takes off.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel finds M-C on the star platform. M-C lashes out, saying cruel things and personal attacks at Rapunzel. Rapunzel asks, "Are you saying that because you mean it, or because you want to hurt me?" M-C says she means it. Rapunzel asks the question again. M-C doesn't answer.

Rapunzel apologizes for what she said, but explains that caring for the other Coronans doesn't mean she doesn't care for her.

M-C says again that the Coronans are terrible and she shouldn't feel responsibility for them. She asks why Rapunzel wants to bring them back.

Rapunzel answers that she's their queen and she has to do everything she can for them. M-C tells her, "you don't have to do anything." She asks Rapunzel what she wants to do.

Rapunzel insists that helping the Coronans and being a good queen to them is what she wants to do, and M-C points out that she's only saying that because of all the pressure that had been put on her.

M-C tells Rapunzel that she's free of that pressure here, that she can be whoever she wants to be. She asks again what Rapunzel wants.

Rapunzel answers that it doesn't matter what she wants. M-C tells her that what she wants is the only thing that matters. She reminds Rapunzel that what she wants is what brought her out of her tower in the first place.

Rapunzel insists again that being queen is what she wants. M-C reminds her how the pressure of becoming queen was very harsh and constricting on her, and she was only truly happy away from it all.

Rapunzel tries to protest and say that she doesn't feel that way anymore. M-C is not convinced, and Rapunzel is unnerved by how her excuses seem to dissolve before M-C.

For once, Rapunzel is the one to flee from their conversation.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel and M-C are caught in a stalemate: M-C avoids restarting the conversation because she doesn't want to discuss bringing the Coronans back, Rapunzel avoids restarting the conversation because she's afraid of M-C seeing through her again and reminding her how trapped she feels in her role as queen.

So they return to their standard before it all happened.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Sixth Month

Three weeks before the spring equinox, M-C disappears.

Rapunzel looks for her everywhere. She spends entire days searching. Days and then weeks pass. Rapunzel's terrified something happened to her, but all of the torches in the castle and lights in the garden haven't gone out. Both of the horse specters are still there. She's just gone.

On the spring equinox, she sees not-Max shift to hitch onto Rapunzel's carriage. She had communicated with her friends and family via messenger pigeon, and she knows she's needed outside of Underworld.

Devastated, she leaves dozens of notes behind for M-C, in all of their most frequented locations. She writes out another copy of M-C's journal, as best as she could remember it, in case she lost her own. She writes recipes of mild dishes to put with food supplies so M-C could keep cooking for herself.

And she leaves. The wall opens where she had first entered six months ago, and after not-Max walks back into Underworld, the wall seals behind her.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Notes:

When Rapunzel suggests bringing back the other Coronans, M-C gets very upset. She lashes out, afraid that Rapunzel doesn't care about her as much as she cares about others, but she doesn't really mean the things she says. M-C, being extremely close to Rapunzel now, tries to sell Rapunzel on their life alone together. This comes both from Cassandra, who doesn't really like anyone else and had many of her best experiences alone with Rapunzel, and the Moonstone, who also doesn't like anyone else and lived happily alone with the Sundrop for millennia. Additionally, M-C is afraid that the Coronans would reject her and drive her away, and she'd lose Rapunzel again.

When Rapunzel gives her answer that she wants to help the Coronans because has to as their queen, M-C tells Rapunzel to do what she wants rather than fulfill the role she's pressured into. M-C is partly trying to change Rapunzel's mind for personal reasons, but she does genuinely care about Rapunzel. She knows that being queen isn't what Rapunzel wants and what would make her happy. Of course, the conversation stops there.

And then M-C disappears. She can't tolerate the thought of saying goodbye to Rapunzel and watching her leave, so she leaves first without saying goodbye. This is obviously awful. The reasoning is based in both her abandonment trauma (leave first so she's not the one being left) and her inability to confront difficult emotions. It's not shared in-story, but she doesn't leave Underworld during this time. She seals herself in the caves under her home she shared with Gothel - a place Rapunzel doesn't know about - and waits for Rapunzel to be gone.

Chapter 18: Summer

Rapunzel works for weeks on helping her people, still refugees in another kingdom. She throws herself entirely into the work to avoid thinking about M-C and Underworld. She participates in long political talks with her relatives on her mother's side about allocations of resources and land, drawing up agreements, mediating disputes…

One night in the palace there, when Rapunzel goes back to her guest suite she'd been living in and exhausted after hours of working, she finds M-C standing in her room.

Rapunzel is overwhelmed. She's so happy and relieved and tells M-C how much she missed her and how worried she'd been. M-C is very awkward about the reunion, and hesitates before hugging her back. Rapunzel asks her where on earth she'd been and what had she been doing.

M-C holds out art supplies that Rapunzel left behind in Underworld and tells Rapunzel that she forgot it, so M-C wanted to give it to her. Rapunzel is confused and says she left it behind on purpose and asks again where M-C was.

M-C says without looking at Rapunzel that she knew Rapunzel was going to leave, and it was going to hurt, so she decided to leave first.

Rapunzel cannot believe this and slaps M-C in response, who moves only slightly from the blow and is mostly confused by it. Rapunzel shouts at M-C about how worried she'd been, how heartbroken and upset she was, and she can't believe M-C would be so selfish to disappear without a word. Rapunzel starts crying. A lot.

M-C is still confused by the reaction and starts apologizing and goes to hug her, but guards start knocking on Rapunzel's door, asking if she's okay and that they heard shouting. M-C disappears out a window.

Rapunzel tries to compose herself, and after she assures the guards that she's fine and there was no one there - she was just venting to Pascal about things that she was upset about - she closes and locks the doors again. She goes to ready herself for sleep, still in shock by M-C's appearance and confession.

M-C returns, coming back through the window. She apologizes, saying she didn't understand her leaving would be so upsetting to Rapunzel. Rapunzel gets angry again - but quieter this time - telling her that if she knew she'd feel upset by Rapunzel leaving, that of course Rapunzel would feel upset by her leaving. M-C apologizes again, and Rapunzel says that she'll forgive her if M-C promises never to do something like that again. M-C promises.

Rapunzel asks M-C where she had gone, what she'd been doing, how she'd been feeling, if she still has her journal…

M-C still has a grasp on the memories she had last time she was with Rapunzel, but not many more than that. They talk for a long time into the night, catching up, until Rapunzel falls asleep sitting on the bed with her. M-C leaves a note about her leaving to go back to Underworld before the morning, and disappears out the window again.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C appears again in Rapunzel's room a couple nights later with more items Rapunzel had left behind in Underworld. Rapunzel tells her again that she left them there on purpose, since she would be going back. M-C reacts awkwardly and Rapunzel realizes she had been looking for an excuse to come see her again. She tells M-C that she doesn't need a reason to visit, that Rapunzel misses her too.

M-C starts visiting a couple nights a week. M-C doesn't like to hear about other people - "I don't like anyone else," she tells Rapunzel in a moody voice - so Rapunzel doesn't tell her about her work. But M-C is fine with Pascal, who is very nervous around her but tries not to show it for Rapunzel's sake.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

It's the dead of summer during a heatwave when M-C brings Rapunzel a gift during one of her visits. She had found an illustrated botanical journal of plants in the seven kingdoms among the rubble of the library. The journal was damaged so she re-wrote and re-drew every page for Rapunzel.

The gift is beautiful. Rapunzel is overwhelmed by how thoughtful it is and how much effort it must have been. She flips through it, delighted to have a new book to read, all in Cassandra's handwriting.

They're sitting on Rapunzel's bed, Rapunzel flipping through the journal's pages when Eugene walks through the door, laughing and saying "blondie, you're not going to believe what-"

He sees M-C and stops dead in his tracks, and M-C stands from the bed, staring at him with open hatred.

Rapunzel, laughing nervously: oh hey Eugene, Cass has come by!
Eugene, smiling with terror: I can see that!
M-C, glaring, the temperature in the room dropping precipitously: go. Away.
Eugene, chuckling nervously: well I'll leave you ladies to it [turns to leave]
Rapunzel, also standing from the bed: no Eugene, you should stay.
Eugene, hoarsely: pardon
M-C: what
Rapunzel: he's our friend, Cass, and he's welcome to stay.
M-C, snarling at him: go AWAY
Rapunzel: no, Eugene, please stay.
Eugene, terrified: it's okay sunshine I think I better-
M-C: LEAVE
Rapunzel: Cass, you can't tell him to leave, he has as much a right to be here as you. And he's our friend. I know you know he's our friend.

The temperature has continued to drop. Frost begins to cover the stones near M-C as the humidity condenses on the cold stones and freezes.

Eugene: if you use 'friend' very loosely-
M-C: I don't want him here.
Rapunzel: well I do, and it's my room. You should get used to being around other people.
M-C, increasingly agitated: I don't like him, he has to leave
Rapunzel: he doesn't have to do anything, Cass. He's welcome to stay.

M-C is standing by the windowsill and starts clawing at it behind her. She snarls at Eugene again.

Rapunzel, seeing the marks she's making on the windowsill: you can't break things, Cass.
M-C: Don't tell me what to do
Rapunzel: it's my room, you can't break things.
M-C: I don't take orders from you!
Rapunzel: It's not orders, Cass, it's rules. Like you had rules in Underworld, I have rules here. You can't break things, and you can't hurt anyone.

M-C takes her hand off the windowsill and drags her claws down her face instead. She seems to be barely holding herself back from lunging at Eugene. Her claws leave red scratches on her face.

Rapunzel: you can't hurt yourself either, Cass.
M-C: arrrrhhhhhhh
Rapunzel: if you're angry and need to break things, go back to Underworld.
M-C: Don't tell me what to do!

But M-C stops clawing at herself. She sees the book she brought for Rapunzel on the bed and lunges for it. She shreds it in her claws before disappearing out the window.

Eugene, after a couple moments: well, that's was… is she going to come back and kill me in my sleep?
Rapunzel, walking over to look out the window: probably not.

Rapunzel then picks up the shredded book. She feels miserable at losing the gift.

Eugene: wow if I wasn't terrified for my life I'd be really enjoying how cool it is in here now. Also, I would just like to say that I was right, she is quite literally an ice demon.
Rapunzel, putting the book down: that gives me an idea
Eugene: we throw her in a volcano?
Rapunzel: no, the heatwave. Everyone's suffering from it, and it's dangerous for the elderly. Cassandra can help.
Eugene: say again
Rapunzel: she can freeze the lake so that we have ice, and we can bring it to the people in need.
Eugene, chuckling incredulously: don't get me wrong, I love the optimism sunshine. But how on earth are you going to get Cassandra to help people.
Rapunzel, glancing back over at the window: I'm... going to have to figure that out.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

A few days later M-C appears in Rapunzel's room, and she's quiet and looks sad. Rapunzel thinks that she's just there for Rapunzel's company and that she won't mention the shredded book, but she actually apologizes to Rapunzel. She says since she had given it to Rapunzel as a gift, breaking it meant she broke one of Rapunzel's belongings. She broke her promise to Rapunzel.

Rapunzel tells her that she forgives her, and she can make it up to her by doing Rapunzel a favor. She tells M-C to meet her out at the lake, and when they're both there Rapunzel asks her if she could freeze it because it's so hot out.

M-C refuses. Rapunzel's disappointed, but M-C continues: if she froze the lake, it would kill the fish. She doesn't want to hurt the animals.

She says that she can bring water out of the ground and freeze it because water from under the earth doesn't have animals in it. Rapunzel asks if she could try, because it would really help the people in the city.

M-C is upset about how the favor is actually for other people, not for Rapunzel herself. Rapunzel assures her that helping the people of the city would be helping Rapunzel, since she cares a lot for them. She adds that doing this for the people would make them happy and like M-C more.

M-C is swayed and uses her rocks under the ground first to create a sinkhole in a nearby field by compressing all the dirt under it, and then to put pressure on the water table so that the groundwater would geyser up to fill the space. She freezes the pool through to the bottom.

But the shifting ground made enough noise for some people to come investigating, and they see M-C near their city while she works on freezing the pool.

When M-C finishes her work, Rapunzel is ecstatic. She jumps up and down in her excitement, and tackle-hugs M-C. M-C's happy about the attention and hugs Rapunzel back. She dismisses her armor - except for her right gauntlet, as always - to be closer to Rapunzel.

They separate, and Rapunzel steps over to the frozen pool to look at it, commenting on what a great job M-C had done. Behind her, M-C is shot by a crossbow bolt. She staggers back with the bolt embedded in her right shoulder. Rapunzel looks behind her at the sound and can't believe what she's seeing.

Guardsmen of the not-Corona kingdom rush out of the bushes and trees around the field to pull Rapunzel away and grab M-C. Rapunzel's shouting at them to stand down and get away from her and that she's not a threat, but the guards ignore her - Rapunzel has no authority over them. The head guard is the last to come into the field and he tells Rapunzel that M-C is a monster and they would not let what happened to Corona happen here. Looking towards M-C, he draws his sword.

Through the group of men, Rapunzel sees that M-C is restrained and her expression enraged, but as soon as she makes eye contact with Rapunzel her expression falters. Rapunzel wonders why she wasn't fighting back and realizes that Rapunzel had given her the rule that she couldn't hurt anyone here. Knowing they intend to kill her, Rapunzel shouts at M-C that she can fight back and that she needs to escape.

That was the only invitation M-C needed. She snarls at the men holding her and rocks shoot from the ground to knock all of them aside and many of them out. And she flees.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel is terrified for M-C. The head guard tries to grab her to shout at her for working with a threat to the kingdom, but Rapunzel dodges him and runs back towards the castle. She knows she needs to get to Max and ride to Underworld.

At Underworld's wall, Rapunzel puts her hand and forehead against it, asking desperately to be let in. The stones don't react, so Rapunzel uses her power to explode a hole in the wall - which seals immediately. She mounts Max again and tells him to run at the wall, she'll demolish it right before they get to it so they could ride through before it seals again.

Luckily, Max is used to pulling off insane feats with Rapunzel, like their leap over the pit of spikes near the Great Tree. So he does as she says, and miraculously it works - they make it into Underworld.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Notes:

Due to M-C's rock (ha) bottom self esteem she still assumed that she felt more strongly for Rapunzel than Rapunzel did for her. M-C sees Rapunzel's reaction to what she did, and she finally works out that Rapunzel cares for her a comparable amount. She goes to see Rapunzel in secret frequently (she missed Rapunzel too much to keep waiting for fall to see her again, the lesbian).

She gets upset at Eugene - and upset at Rapunzel by proxy - but she realizes that she's the one in the wrong at least for destroying the book. And seeing Eugene, despite how enraged it made her, opened part of her mind to others - she couldn't keep pretending the world was only her and Rapunzel, the way it was before the Sundrop was taken. Other people exist and they matter. This is why Rapunzel is able to convince M-C to freeze the pool for the city: Rapunzel says that the people would like her better, and now that M-C can't keep ignoring others, she wants that.

The next chapter is fully written out.

Chapter 19: Everything

Max isn't jazzed about the dead-kingdom thing. He keeps looking back at Rapunzel nervously, and she assures him that everything is okay.

When they crest the hill towards the capital, under the bright light of the full moon Rapunzel is astonished to see that the huge spikes of black rock that had previously pierced the sky over the city were gone. In fact, all evidence of the black rock in the city was gone. She could only see it in the augments of Underworld castle.

They ride over the long bridge to the capital, and upon entering the capital Rapunzel is even more shocked to see all of the buildings in front of them rebuilt. As they ride up the main road, Rapunzel sees that every structure they pass has been repaired.

In the castle courtyard, Rapunzel is grateful to see that the horse specters are not there. Max has dealt with enough eerie things, she thinks, so she didn't want to have to leave him with some undead horses. She dismounts Max and leaves Pascal with him, telling Pascal to stay close to him for warmth. Taking a deep breath, she wills her hair to shine to light her way.

And she enters the castle.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

She shouts for M-C, running to all of their frequented locations: the great hall, the kitchen, the cosmic garden terrace, her bedroom…

Finally, she finds her on the castle's top platform of black rock.

M-C is sitting in the center of the platform. She had wrapped her shoulder with bandages, but hadn't tried to pull the bolt free yet. She had reformed her armor everywhere except for her shoulder. She had collected many linens - presumably for the excessive bleeding that would occur when she pulls the bolt free.

In the moment before M-C sees her, Rapunzel wonders why she is here of all places, and not somewhere with running water or medical supplies readily available. She wonders if M-C chose it because she felt safe there.

"Cass," Rapunzel begins, stepping onto the platform. "Are you o-"

"You," M-C snarls, her head snapping over to look at Rapunzel. She throws her uninjured arm towards her, and black spikes shoot up from the ground rapidly approaching Rapunzel until rocks rise around her, pinning her arms and encasing her up to her torso in stone.

"What-" Rapunzel gasps. She tries to pull herself free of the rocks but can't move. "Cass, it's me! What are you doing?!"

M-C rises to her feet, her uninjured arm holding the bandages around the bolt. "You," she snarls again, "you tried to have me killed."

"What?!" Rapunzel cries. "What are you talking about? Why would I do that?!"

"You planned it from the start!" M-C yells. "You wanted me there, you wanted my armor gone! You wanted me gone," she adds in an intense voice.

"Cass," Rapunzel starts, trying to compose herself. "None of that makes sense. How could I plan that you'd take off your armor? Why would I want you killed? You're my best friend! I've spent a year doing nothing but trying to help you!"

But the rocks around her begin to tighten.

"You've been manipulating me this entire time," M-C snarls at her. "You used me for whatever you wanted, until I saw through you. But you tricked me again into trusting you to get me under your control again!" Her voice escalates at the end in rage, and the platform under them shakes.

Rapunzel has no idea what to say. She feels terror that M-C seems entirely incapable of rational thinking again.

"You used me to put the city back together and as soon as you could give it back to those horrible people, you tried to get rid of me!" M-C cries. "You never cared about me!"

"None of that is true," Rapunzel tells her. "You were the one who wanted me in Underworld in the first place! You were the one who started helping me build back the capital! I have never given you orders here. Everything you did was what you wanted to do!"

"Only because you manipulated me!" M-C shouts. "You made me trust you! You got inside of my head again!"

"I didn't make you do anything, Cass," Rapunzel argues. "You trusted me because you know me. You know that I care about you, and you know you're my best friend."

"Liar!" M-C roars, and the platform under them quakes again. In the moonlight, Rapunzel sees cracks spider out from where M-C stands.

"Cass, be careful," Rapunzel tells her with fear in her voice. "Look under you, the cracks-"

"Don't tell me what to do!"

And the platform explodes. As Rapunzel begins to freefall with the rest of the pieces of black rock towards the castle hundreds of feet below, she uses her power to break the rock around her and lassos part of the remaining tower with her hair to save herself.

As she swings towards it, she sees M-C falling with the black rocks. M-C shoots a large, slender spike from the tower and grabs it with her uninjured arm. But as soon as her arm is pulled down by the force of her fall, she releases the spike with a cry. The muscles damaged in her chest caused too much pain to hold on, and she begins to fall again as parts of the collapsed platform strike the castle below.

Rapunzel dives after her. She throws her hair again to lasso M-C, and pulls them together as they fall. Holding M-C around the waist, she wills her hair to surround them in a shield, and they crash into the castle.

As it had done so many months ago during the jump from her tower, her shield protects them and cushions the landing. After a moment Rapunzel lets her hair drop from around them, and she sees that they landed in the castle's dining hall, on the rubble of the castle's destroyed roof and the collapsed platform.

M-C is next to Rapunzel, lying on her hair, her eyes closed. The bandages around her shoulder are saturated with blood. "Cass," Rapunzel whispers as she pulls M-C into her lap.

"Cass, hey," she says, louder, brushing strands of curls from M-C's face. "Cass, it's okay, we're okay."

She doesn't answer. Rapunzel feels her throat tighten, and immediately she puts her hand to the side of M-C's neck to check for a pulse with tears building in her eyes.

There is one. Her magic flaring from the touch, Rapunzel cries anyway.

She doesn't know what to do. Blood is leeching from the saturated bandages. She barely touches them and her fingertips come away red.

The sight reminds her of when she held Eugene as he bled out from the wound Gothel had given him. She had thought her healing magic was gone from her hair being cut, but her tear landing on him brought him back.

She has no other ideas. Rapunzel presses her forehead against M-C's, and she lets her teardrops fall from her eyelashes. Her face inches from M-C's she holds her breath, hoping desperately for that golden light to fill the room as it had in her tower.

But nothing happens. The drops roll off of M-C's cheeks.

Rapunzel knows she can't stay there - she needs to bring M-C somewhere with material for bandages, water… even if she fears worsening the injury from carrying her. As she's about to try to lift her, Rapunzel hears the echo of hooves on stone tile rapidly approaching. The wooden doors to the ruined dining hall are kicked down, and Max rushes in.

"Max," Rapunzel breathes, relief filling her. "Max! We're over here!"

At her voice, Max comes quickly, navigating the ruins. Pascal peaks over Max's head to see Rapunzel and M-C in the debris.

"You heard the crash, didn't you?" Rapunzel asks, and they both nod. "You are both so smart, thank you, I need your help. Max, you need to find first aid supplies, okay? The infirmary is still standing. Cass is hurt really badly. I don't want to move her until her wound is bandaged better. Pascal, you can help him. Please, go quickly."

Max and Pascal nod again, and Max turns to rush back out of the hall. Rapunzel looks down at M-C's pale face again, distraught.

She curls closer against her. "You'll be okay, I promise," Rapunzel whispers to her. "I'll take care of you."

Rapunzel is holding her, lightly smoothing her hair, when M-C takes an abrupt, shuddering gasp and her eyes fly open. She tenses in Rapunzel's arms and then winces in pain, breathing sharply again.

"Cass," Rapunzel says, shocked. "You're awake-"

M-C tries to pull away from Rapunzel but doesn't manage it. She winces again and looks down towards her injury.

"Cass, it's okay," Rapunzel tells her. "You're hurt but you're going to be okay-"

M-C tries to sit up and fails, falling back against Rapunzel. She looks around at the destroyed room and Rapunzel's hair all around them, and finally she looks up at Rapunzel.

"You," she says, hoarsely.

Rapunzel abruptly remembers that right before the platform collapsed, M-C had been enraged with her. Rapunzel holds her breath again. Was she going to blame Rapunzel for this too?

M-C's glowing eyes stare into Rapunzel's, and her eyebrows just barely draw together. "You… saved me. From the fall."

Rapunzel blinks in surprise. "Of course I saved you," she answers.

M-C's expression shifts with confusion. "Why?"

"What- what do you mean why?" Rapunzel asks, feeling just as confused. "You're my best friend, Cass. Of course I saved you."

M-C's expression twists with disdain and she looks away. "You should have let me fall. It would've fixed all your problems."

Rapunzel feels a flare of frustration. "I don't want you dead, Cass! I-"

"You should," M-C cuts her off without looking at her.

"Why would you say that?" Rapunzel asks, distressed by how M-C refuses to listen to her.

M-C doesn't respond, and Rapunzel thinks for a few moments that she isn't going to. But finally she answers.

"Those guards were right," M-C says quietly. "I am a monster."

Rapunzel's eyebrows draw together again. "That isn't true-"

"Look around you!" M-C snaps, gesturing with her uninjured arm towards the destroyed hall. "I've ruined everything! It's all I've ever done! I've destroyed Corona, our home, and no one will ever forgive me. They shouldn't forgive me! They know I'm a monster, and you should too! I've done terrible things." Tears begin to fill her eyes, and she finally looks at Rapunzel. "Why won't you just give up on me?"

Rapunzel studies her face as the tears start to stream from her eyes. "Cass…" Rapunzel says quietly. She knows she has to get her words just right.

"You know," she begins slowly, "I was scared, for a while, thinking after what you did to Corona that you were someone completely different than I had known. I thought you'd changed, or that I never knew you at all. But I know now that's not true." Rapunzel puts a hand to Cassandra's cheek, and she wipes away one of her tears.

"I can see it, in your eyes," Rapunzel tells her gently. "I remember- when we first met, you were so guarded and formal with me, at first. I couldn't tell what you were really like… It felt like the first time I saw you, the real you, was after three weeks, when I heard you laugh for the first time. Seeing that look in your eyes… and knowing it was the real you," Rapunzel lets out a breath. "It was the most remarkable thing I'd ever seen."

M-C's eyes haven't left hers, and her eyebrows draw just barely together. Rapunzel continues just as softly, "And even now, after everything that's happened…" she brushes her thumb over M-C's cheek again. "I still see that look in your eyes. You're my best friend, Cassandra." She smiles gently. "And I will never give up on you."

M-C raises her hand to cover Rapunzel's. "But you're wrong, Raps," she says softly. "I'm not that person. I have changed. I'm... not Cassandra. I'm not the Moonstone. I'm something else, and all I've ever done is ruin things. I…" M-C gently pulls Rapunzel's hand from her face, and she looks away. "You can give the kingdom back to your people. I'll leave, once I'm gone the land will return to normal. I'll go somewhere else, some frozen forest in the north, and I'll stay there alone. I won't ruin anything for anyone again. I'm… sorry, Raps." M-C closes her eyes. "I'm so sorry, for everything."

Rapunzel stares at her, feeling her heart start to break in her chest again. She breathes in and refuses to let it.

Rapunzel lifts her hand to M-C's face again and gently turns it back towards her. "I'm not giving you up that easy, Cass," she says quietly. "You are still that person. I've spent a year with you and you are Cassandra. The memories you have, the way you act…" Rapunzel smiles gently at her again. "You're her. You're my Cass. You just have… a little extra, now. And we're going to figure it out, together, okay? I'm not going to let you go."

M-C grimaces. "I don't think your people would very much like having me around."

"That doesn't matter," Rapunzel lightly strokes M-C's hair with her fingertips. "You're my priority."

M-C turns her head away again. "Maybe," she says quietly. "But I don't understand why. All I've done for the past year is hurt you and everyone else."

"That's not all you've done," Rapunzel answers just as quietly. "And none of those hurts aren't fixable or forgivable. You were confused and in pain… but we can make things right, together."

M-C blinks back tears again. "I still don't understand why. What do you get out of this?"

"Everything," Rapunzel says softly. "You're everything to me, Cass. I can't even imagine my life without you. I love you."

"What?" M-C asks, with a voice as though the air had been knocked from her lungs.

"I love you, Cass," Rapunzel repeats, stronger.

M-C stares up at her with an unreadable expression, and the distant, approaching sound of hooves on stone tiles brings Rapunzel back into the reality of their situation. She lowers her hand to M-C's wound.

"And I'm going to take care of you now, okay?" Rapunzel continues. "I know you didn't want me to do that in the past, but you're really hurt. I'm going to help you. I need you to be okay because I love you, Cass, and you're everything to me." Rapunzel reaches to take hold of M-C's hand, and the matching bracelets on their wrists brush against each other.

M-C's expression shifts to an uncertain one. Rapunzel braces herself for M-C to protest. She's sure that she'll have to make M-C accept her help - even if it hurts their relationship.

"Okay," M-C finally answers in a small voice.

"What?" Rapunzel asks. She doesn't believe what she heard.

"Okay," M-C repeats softly, closing her eyes.

Rapunzel stares down at her in disbelief and wonder. Finally she says, "Max is almost back with supplies to help. I'll rebandage your wound so we can get you to my room…"

She continues talking about her plan, but M-C doesn't open her eyes.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Notes:

Their argument when Rapunzel returns to Underworld is the "final boss". M-C is absurd. She lashes out in the extreme. This is, of course, because she's at her most vulnerable, physically and emotionally. But lashing out at Rapunzel and trying to destroy their bond is severe self-sabotage. With the castle representing her mind, this self-sabotage causes the platform to explode and she falls, hurting her shoulder further, and she definitely would have died upon impact had Rapunzel not saved her. Rapunzel pulls her into the same shield she had used to keep M-C out at the beginning of her first Underworld stay.

Rapunzel saving her and telling her "I love you" is the last step to get through to M-C, fully. M-C breaks open and shows all of her vulnerability and self-hate. Rapunzel reassures her and will never give up on her.

This scene is very similar to - in fact uses direct dialogue from - the series finale, which is also a scene in which Rapunzel finally gets through to Cassandra and breaks the vicious cycle spurred by her abandonment trauma. I wrote about this before, but her trauma leads her to lash out at the people who get close to her so that either the person is driven away and she's in control of it - she's not being abandoned, driving them away was her choice - or the person will stay and affirm to her that they won't leave - so she feels comforted that she won't be abandoned. Of course, with Cassandra even when someone (Rapunzel) tells her that she won't leave, Cassandra doesn't believe it because of her rock bottom self esteem. So she continues lashing out, until she can't deny it anymore - in-series, this is the "first time I heard you laugh" speech, which she ends with "I will never give up on you"; in this story, it's also that, but includes "you're my priority," "you're everything to me," and "I love you."

So now, M-C finally knows that her bond with Rapunzel is equal: there's no unbalanced power dynamic, Rapunzel loves her as much as she loves Rapunzel, and Rapunzel shows it. Rapunzel prioritizes M-C, and says that M-C is her everything in the same way Rapunzel is her everything.

Because of all this, M-C finally allows Rapunzel to take care of her in the same way the Sundrop would take care of the Moonstone. She understands their relationship to be the same as it was in Asterium.

The three major turning points in the very long back-and-forth of getting through to M-C (the Freebird painting, restoring her bedroom, and the "I love you") are all prompted by M-C asking "why" about Rapunzel's actions: why she didn't leave Underworld, why she kept working after almost being killed, and why she saved M-C. It's amazing what direct communication and active listening can achieve!

Chapter 20: Apologies

After Max and Pascal have returned with supplies and while Rapunzel is rebandaging M-C's wound, she wakes again. She barely speaks, only offering small affirmations or negations when Rapunzel asks her questions about her pain and what she can move.

With Max's help, Rapunzel gets M-C to her room. Rapunzel, Pascal, and Max take shifts watching over M-C while she sleeps.

The next morning while M-C is still asleep, Rapunzel goes to make breakfast for them. Luckily the kitchen has supplies for her to work with: since M-C had continued to make meals for herself after Rapunzel left Underworld, whenever M-C visited the other kingdom Rapunzel would give her food to bring back to cook.

Knowing that she won't be leaving Underworld anytime soon, Rapunzel wonders at her prospects for obtaining food once the supplies run out. She's not sure if her friends would be able to leave anything for her at the wall, considering what happened before she returned to Underworld. (She's not even sure if her loved ones will try sending the messenger pigeon. Do they even know that she's here? Surely they could guess, once they were told what happened.)

She remembers what she had done with the petrified tree, and she decides that later she would try to use her magic to resurrect the castle kitchen's vegetable garden.

For now, she brings breakfast up to her room.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C is awake when Rapunzel returns, sitting up against the pillows and pressing at the bandages around her shoulder. When Rapunzel enters the room, she looks up with an uncertain expression.

"'Morning," Rapunzel says cheerfully to her. "I made us breakfast…"

Rapunzel carries the tray over and sits next to M-C on her bed. "How do you feel?" Rapunzel asks.

M-C's eyebrows draw together as she looks back down at her bandages around her right shoulder. "My arm hurts," she murmurs. "But I don't know if it's…" she hesitates.

Rapunzel frowns, concerned, and M-C dismisses the rest of the black rock armor on her body.

She looks down and lifts her right arm from the pillow it rested on. She turns her hand around, staring at it.

Rapunzel's breath catches in her throat. It was her withered hand, the one Rapunzel hadn't seen since before the Dark Kingdom. It looked the same: blackened, gnarled, the skin pulled taught against her bones and tendons, as if she had lost the rest of her flesh underneath. It hadn't healed at all. It might have gotten even worse, Rapunel can't remember well enough to say. The contrast of the bright blue friendship bracelet Rapunzel made for her against the arm that Rapunzel cursed with decay feels like a cruel joke. She feels slightly ill at the sight, and her eyes begin to fill with tears.

"I haven't seen it either," M-C tells her quietly. "I was… always too scared to look." She puts her arm back down and clears her throat. "I expected it to be worse, so… that's good."

Rapunzel finally composes herself enough to speak, but she can't make herself look M-C in the eyes. "Cass," she breathes. "I am so, so sorry."

"It's okay," M-C responds softly, but Rapunzel still stares downward. M-C lifts her withered hand and touches Rapunzel's face, turning it up towards her to look into her eyes. Rapunzel's expression is deeply distraught, and she lifts both hands to hold M-C's withered one. Rapunzel turns her face to press a kiss against M-C's palm.

"I'm so sorry," Rapunzel repeats softly.

"I forgive you," M-C answers.

Rapunzel shuffles closer to M-C and hugs her forearm to her chest. She places another kiss on the back of M-C's fingertips and doesn't let her arm go.

"I'm sorry, too," M-C tells her.

"You've already apologized, Cass. I forgive you for all of it," Rapunzel says quietly.

"I want to be specific," M-C responds. "There's a lot of it, isn't there?" M-C gently pulls her arm away and looks past Rapunzel to her window with its view of the kingdom. "And it begins earlier than this. Even before we met again as Rapunzel and Cassandra."

Rapunzel stares at her. Whatever she'll apologize for, Rapunzel has no memory of it. But she lets M-C speak.

"When you were taken," M-C begins, still looking towards the window, "I didn't know what to do. I was so scared and angry, I would've done anything if I thought I could get you back. And I did. The Dark Kingdom… it wasn't like that before you were gone. It was abandoned - the kingdom fell to ruin on its own centuries ago - but no wasteland. I sent spikes out to look for you and when it wasn't fast enough, I leeched the life around me for more power. Sending the spikes out, I didn't care that it was ravaging the land and destroying the plants and hurting the creatures you loved. All that mattered to me was finding you… and that was wrong. I'm sorry," M-C says, finally looking back at Rapunzel. "I'm sorry for all of the destruction I caused."

Rapunzel stares at her. "Your magic… it comes from draining life around you?" She asks in a voice barely above a whisper.

The corner of M-C's mouth quirks just barely in a smile. "Not all of it," she answers. "It's just something I can do. Absorbing energy and changing it and putting it back out… you know, the moon only glows as a reflection of the sun's light. Of course, you don't need any skill like that," M-C says, barely smiling again. "I'm nothing compared to you."

Rapunzel frowns. "I'm not sure about that-"

"I am," M-C cuts her off. "Your magic is bottomless and blazing. I have more varied skills, but you're much stronger than me. That's why they were scared of us," M-C tells her. "They knew that between your power and my abilities, we could do anything."

"Who was scared of us?" Rapunzel asks, her eyebrows drawing together. "The people studying the Sundrop and Moonstone?"

"The Coronans," M-C answers. "It's why they betrayed us. They wanted us gone because they were afraid. You don't remember?"

"Cass, I think you're getting confused again," Rapunzel tells her uncertainly. "I've told you before, the Coronan citizens never betrayed us. And they didn't know anything about the Sundrop and Moonstone."

M-C frowns and looks down in thought. She doesn't respond.

"...But it's okay," Rapunzel tells her, holding her hand. "This is just one of those things we'll figure out together. You're doing better every day."

"Right," M-C murmurs.

Rapunzel feels badly about how she just made M-C embarrassed and sad. "I forgive you, you know," Rapunzel tells her. "Everything you did with the spikes, looking for me… I mean, I think we should try to make things right with the people who lost their homes, but I'm not angry with you about what you did."

Rapunzel strokes M-C's arm reassuringly. M-C nods.

"There was more…" M-C says quietly. "I… I'm sorry for running away, after I became me. I said so many mean things to you before, and then I just ran away. I shouldn't have…"

"Cass, it's okay," Rapunzel tells her. "You were really confused. And you were mad at me. I understand."

"It wasn't right," M-C says. "And then I tried to hurt your dad, and I scared everyone and broke everything-"

Rapunzel knows that she's about to start spiraling. "Well I'm sorry for bringing you somewhere you'd get shot by a crossbow," Rapunzel interrupts.

M-C frowns. "You couldn't have known that would happen, Raps…" She says. "I- I'm sorry for turning your kingdom into a wasteland-"

"I'm sorry for making you feel unappreciated for years," Rapunzel cuts her off again.

"Are… are you trying to out-apologize me right now?" M-C asks in disbelief.

"I dunno," Rapunzel answers. "Keep apologizing and find out."

M-C squints. "I'm sorry for being such a jerk when you first arrived here-"

"I'm sorry for not listening to you during our journey and then telling you to get over it," Rapunzel interrupts.

"I'm sorry for abandoning you here for several weeks without saying anything."

"You've already apologized for that before, it doesn't count," Rapunzel tells her.

M-C frowns. "I'm sorry for yelling at you and accusing you of things you didn't do-"

"I'm sorry for not telling my parents and the captain to let you be a guard," Rapunzel says.

M-C scowls. "I'm- hm." She pauses. "I'm sorry for conveying a sense of unease and making you sad when you showed me the freaky shit at the bottom of the ocean that you were studying that you were proud of," M-C tells her.

"What?" Rapunzel asks, laughing.

M-C smiles. "Yeah, that was a couple millennia ago… I also already apologized for it. But not with words, so this counts."

"Wait, what freaky stuff at the bottom of the ocean?" Rapunzel asks. "Like, fish and crabs?"

"Yeah, but the freakiest fish and crabs you've seen in your life," M-C says. "Hold on… it was something like this," M-C says, lifting her left hand and generating black rock from the floor.

"Why is it so big?" Rapunzel asks, staring at the huge, spindley, spider-like crab sculpture now standing in her bedroom.

"I have no idea," M-C answers, also looking at it. "You loved it though."

"I mean," Rapunzel starts, tilting her head at it. "It is kinda cute-"

"Absolutely not," M-C cuts her off.

"No, really! The way he's holding his long leggies with the little pincers up in front of him, he looks kinda shy." Rapunzel smiles at it. "I wanna give him some fruit."

"I don't think it eats fruit, Raps," M-C says, laughing.

Rapunzel feels a thrill run through her at M-C's laugh, a feeling comparable to the magic rush she'd feel from touching her, and she tries to suppress her excitement. "Well this one obviously doesn't," Rapunzel says, gesturing at the stone. "But if we found one in real life I'd give him some fruit. Where are they?"

"I don't know," M-C says. "Somewhere underwater. It's probably good you can't remember, or you'd try to drag me there."

Rapunzel's thoughts abruptly fixate on a question she'd had for many months. "Do... you really think I'm her?" She asks, not looking at M-C.

Rapunzel can see from the corner of her eye M-C staring at her. "What do you mean?" M-C asks.

"I mean…" Rapunzel toys with her hands in front of her. "I have the Sundrop's powers, sure. But do you think I'm her?"

M-C doesn't move. "I know you're her," she answers.

"How?"

"You knew I'm Cassandra," M-C says, "from the memories I have and the way I act. I know you're the Sundrop, from the magic you have and the way you act. I can feel you," M-C says, lifting her hand and gently brushing Rapunzel's face, causing her hair to glow. "There aren't two different parts, it's you. And your personality is exactly the same. It doesn't matter that you don't remember, I know you're her."

"What does that mean?" Rapunzel asks, finally looking at M-C. "What am I then? I- I was a regular human until my parents used the Sundrop, right? If I am the Sundrop, what does that make me?"

"I don't know," M-C tells her quietly. "I don't know what I am either."

Rapunzel looks down again. "And you still don't remember where we're from?"

Out of the corner of her eye she can see M-C smirk. "Well," M-C begins.

"Where we're from before we were from Corona," Rapunzel says, looking back at her and trying to keep herself from smiling.

M-C's smirk fades. "No, I don't remember. I've told you this already but… everything from before, before we came here," M-C gestures vaguely. "It's all so different I hardly understand any of it. I think it'll be the hardest part," M-C adds softly. "Pulling everything together… I think more than just remembering those times, I'll have to figure out how to even process it."

"Sounds scary," Rapunzel murmurs. "And hard."

"Maybe," M-C says, "but I had to figure out eating again too and I did that, so I'm sure I can figure this out." M-C looks at the tray Rapunzel had set aside a few minutes ago.

Rapunzel sees her glance. "Right, let's eat," she says, picking up M-C's bowl to offer to her.

"You know," Rapunzel begins while they have their breakfast, "I was thinking about how to get more food, and I think I'm going to try to bring back the vegetable garden."

M-C glances at her. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Rapunzel says. "Except I would kinda need it to… y'know, not immediately die again when I stopped using magic on it."

"That would be helpful," M-C comments.

"So… Do you think you'd be able to stop everything being dead all the time?"

"It's technically just dormant," M-C clarifies.

"Cass." Rapunzel says flatly. "The trees are stone."

"Dormant stones," M-C notes thoughtfully.

"Cass," Rapunzel says sternly. "It's not just us, Max will need food too. Why are you being stubborn?"

"I'm…" M-C looks away from her. "I'm borrowing the energy from the plants," She finally admits reluctantly. "And also the air. Which is why it's cold."

Rapunzel stares at her. "For what?"

M-C mumbles something Rapunzel can't make out.

"What?" Rapunzel asks again.

"The... clouds," M-C answers. "And generating black rocks. And the torches and horses…"

"Cass, seriously?" Rapunzel asks her. "You can have regular torches!"

"Those take maintenance," M-C whines, looking at her.

"And you can have regular horses!"

"Also maintenance," M-C tells her.

"And the clouds? Why?"

"I…" M-C looks away. "I don't know."

Rapunzel tries not to give an exasperated sigh. "If you don't know, then can't you just stop using energy to make them and let the plants grow again?"

M-C fidgets with the bowl and spoon in her hands. "I..." She stops.

Rapunzel frowns. "What is it, Cass?"

"I don't know why," M-C tells her, "but I don't want… I can't see the sun. There's this… fear… in me about it, and I don't know why. I just can't," she says, looking up at Rapunzel with sad eyes. "I'm sorry, Raps."

Rapunzel's expression softens. She remembers when she first came to Underworld and learned that the sun - even just a painting of it - could make M-C enraged. She had wondered if the sun itself had been in part responsible for M-C's furious rampage that had destroyed Corona. She had forgotten about all of that until now. "Is your fear why the sun makes you so angry?"

M-C makes a face and looks away. "Maybe," she answers. "I don't understand the feelings."

Rapunzel takes a deep breath. "Well, we're going to have to figure something out, since Max and I will need food," she says. "We'll see if I can get supplies like I would before, but I'm not sure we'll hear from people outside of Underworld… Do you think that you could stop draining the plants in just a few places, like the garden?"

M-C nods slowly. "I can do that," she answers. "I'll stop the torches…"

"Or you could let the clouds get a little thinner," Rapunzel suggests. "Since I'll need more light to grow things…"

M-C looks distressed by the thought, and Rapunzel takes her hand. "Hey," she says softly. "This is another one of those things we'll work through, together. We can figure it out."

"Right," M-C mumbles.

Rapunzel frowns as a disturbing thought crosses her mind. "Um, Cass," she begins hesitantly. "If you're draining the plants, then… did you… I mean, are all the animals…"

M-C stares blankly at her.

Rapunzel shifts uncomfortably. "There aren't any animals here," she notes. "So, uh, did you... drain them too?"

"Oh!" M-C says, finally understanding. "No, they fled a little after the people once it started turning into a wasteland."

Rapunzel laughs nervously. "Okay, whew, hah, good." After she catches her breath, another thought strikes her. "Um, but are you… able… to do that? Like could you just, look at an animal or… person… and they'd just... die?"

"I'd have to have connected to them with my matrix," M-C says. "Which is kind of hard because creatures can move. And at that point, if I wanted something dead I'd just spear it, y'know? A lot less effort. Creatures are super inefficient energy sources, anyway. Plants are much better."

Rapunzel's not sure if her cavalier attitude about the question was better or worse. "Ah, right, okay," she says nervously, looking away.

M-C eyes her. "I wouldn't want to," she clarifies. "I've told you before, but I don't want to kill animals. Or people," she adds.

"Yes, right," Rapunzel says, returning her gaze. "I'm sorry. I believe you."

"Your power's way scarier anyway," M-C continues offhandedly. "You can just blow things up, no matrix link required." She smirks at Rapunzel.

"W-well- that's-" Rapunzel splutters.

"I'm just teasing you Raps," M-C says, leaning towards her, but she winces and pulls back.

Rapunzel watches her settle back, worry crossing her face. "It still hurts a lot, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, but I'll be okay," M-C says. "I've got a pretty good nurse taking care of me, so…"

"A real nurse would be better," Rapunzel says softly. "Or someone with healing magic." A wave of distress hits her. "Cass, do you know why I've lost it? I-If I can do magic like growing things or energy blasts or even the decay spell, why can't I heal things?"

"I have no idea Raps," M-C answers quietly. "I wish I could tell you."

Rapunzel looks down, miserable, and M-C takes her hand.

"That's just another thing we'll figure out together, okay?" M-C says earnestly.

Despite her distress, Rapunzel smiles gently.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

"So are you going to get rid of… y'know… that," M-C asks Rapunzel later that morning, while she rests in bed reading through her journal and Rapunzel sits at her desk practicing using her magic on potted plants.

Rapunzel turns around and sees M-C gesturing at the giant crab sculpture in front of the bed.
"No," Rapunzel answers and turns back to her work.

"Wh-why?" M-C asks in disbelief.

"Do you remember early on when you were my Lady-in-Waiting, and I tried to make you sculptures to put in your room?" Rapunzel asks.

"Uh," M-C says, looking between Rapunzel and the crab. "No."

"Well, I did, and you never accepted them," Rapunzel tells her. "And now you've made me a sculpture for my room. How could I get rid of that? I will cherish him," Rapunzel says, turning again to look M-C in the eyes, "for the rest of my life."

"Please let me make you a better sculpture," M-C implores her. "It is staring at me while I read and I cannot handle it."

Rapunzel smirks slightly. "I wonder, why didn't you just get rid of him yourself? You can retract black rocks."

"I really wanted to," M-C says, looking back at the crab, "but I did technically make it for you, which makes it a gift, so I can't break it."

"Ahh," Rapunzel says in satisfaction. "Then the crab stays."

"Psychological torture is an interesting way to treat a patient," M-C notes.

"I'm more of an avant-garde physician," Rapunzel tells her. "Who knows? This could help you recover faster. I'm excited to find out."

"I'm starting to think you don't have a medical license," M-C says.

"That's just the fever talking," Rapunzel responds dismissively.

M-C snorts. "Okay all joking aside Raps, please let me replace the sculpture with something else."

"Well, now I'm attached to him. Are you sure I can't just dress him up to try to make him more palatable to you?" Rapunzel asks.

"That would make it so, so much worse."

Rapunzel sighs. "Okay, fine," she says. "You can kill my friend."

"Don't be such a drama princess," M-C tells her, the sculpture starting to glow blue as the rocks recede.

"It's drama queen, actually," Rapunzel reminds her.

"I don't see a crown-" M-C starts, but they're interrupted by a tapping at Rapunzel's window.

Looking towards the sound, Rapunzel gasps. "A messenger pigeon!" She cries, getting up from her desk.

She rushes to the window and lets the little bird in. She takes the note and reads through it quickly, and then again slightly slower to make sure she doesn't miss anything.

She looks up at M-C, who's watching her with a concerned expression. "It's okay," Rapunzel tells her. "It's from Eugene, and he says that those guards who attacked you were discharged. They tried to report what happened, but Eugene stood up for you and explained you were just there to help. My parents believed him since I've been telling everyone for months that you're not going to hurt anyone, that you were just confused but getting better, and my uncle listened and punished the guards for trying to hurt you and arrest me."

M-C frowns. "Why would Eugene stand up for me? Didn't I try to kill him a week ago?"

"Yeah, but that's normal for you," Rapunzel tells her. "And you did make the frozen pool, so it's clear you wanted to help people. He says that the ice is being brought to the people in need, and everyone's so happy. You did it Cass," Rapunzel says, looking up at her with shining eyes. "You saved people."

M-C looks away, embarrassed. After a moment she says, "I, uh, I guess you'll head back then, so you can oversee all of that."

Rapunzel smiles softly and walks towards the bed. "No, I'm staying here, with you, Cass."

M-C still doesn't look at her. "I thought your people needed you," she says quietly.

"My family can handle everything over there," Rapunzel tells her, sitting on the bed. "My parents have regained enough of their own memories to lead. And… it was narcissistic of me to think that I was needed. They're all good and strong people. Everyone got on well enough for decades before I was around, that's not going to change now." She touches M-C's hand. "You're my priority, Cass."

M-C finally returns her gaze. "Well, I guess if the bird is here, you can ask for more supplies, huh?"

"Oh yeah," Rapunzel comments thoughtfully. She gives M-C a wry smile. "Don't think you'll get out of letting the plants grow, I still want to bring back the vegetable garden."

M-C sighs dramatically. "Can't I make you crystal plants?"

"I can't eat rocks, Cass."

M-C purses her lips in thought. "Have you tried?"

"Speaking of changing the environment around here," Rapunzel says, "Would you consider letting it be warmer? Poor Pascal is cold-blooded and he has to stay by me or Max or the fire all the time."

M-C's expression becomes distressed. Rapunzel pouts at her, and holds up Pascal, who is wearing a matching pout.

M-C stares between both of them with their wide eyes for a moment before giving in. "Gah, fine. Just stop looking at me like that."

Rapunzel beams at her. "I like having you here unable to run away!"

"Thinking you should've shot me earlier?" M-C asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Pssh, Cass," Rapunzel chides. "You know that's not what I meant. I've just… missed you. And for the first time in a long time, things feel… kind of normal."

"I could commit some atrocities to shake things up if you'd like," M-C offers.

"Yeah?" Rapunzel asks, and then gently paps her shoulder, receiving a groan. "You don't seem to be in atrocity-committing shape."

"I'll get there," M-C tells her. "But, uh, I've… missed you too, Raps. A lot. And… I don't feel that way anymore. That I need to run away, or that I don't want you to see me."

Rapunzel's entire face lights up. "Really?"

M-C shifts uncomfortably at the open affection. "...Yeah," she says.

Rapunzel squees and wiggles her whole body in excitement.

"You're trying to keep yourself from hugging me, huh?" M-C asks her.

"Mmmmyes," Rapunzel says, holding her arms to her chest.

M-C laughs lightly. "How about this," she offers, and holds her right hand out towards Rapunzel to hold.

Rapunzel seizes it with both her hands, grinning at M-C, and she feels her magic burn brightly like a bonfire.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

As Rapunzel watches the pigeon fly off from her balcony with her message, another thought occurs to her while looking out over the kingdom. "Hey, Cass," she starts when she enters her room again. "I noticed that the big spikes in the city are gone… And when Max and I were riding here last night, all the houses we passed were fixed."

M-C glances up from her journal. "Oh. Yeah…"

"You… fixed more of the city? Even though I wasn't here?" Rapunzel asks her.

M-C fidgets with the pages of the journal in her hands. "Uh, yeah."

Rapunzel's eyebrows draw together. "Why? I thought you didn't want to bring the Coronans back."

"I don't," M-C says, looking away. "But… you did. And I knew when you came back, you'd just keep working on all those houses, because you'd feel like you have to. Even though it wasn't you who broke them, and they're not your houses. But… I didn't want you to feel like you had to do anything for anyone else here. I wanted you to feel like you could do whatever… or be whoever… you wanted to be." M-C glances down at her lap. "Even if it meant leaving to explore somewhere else. I wanted your six months to be anything you wanted… for you to feel free from all those pressures. So I fixed the city. And, uh, I was working on the other villages, before… this…" She gestures vaguely around, "happened."

Rapunzel feels her heart race in her chest as M-C speaks, and she approaches M-C.

"You did all of that… for me?" Rapunzel asks. She can hardly believe it.

"Um," M-C says, "Yeah."

"Just so that I would feel free to do whatever I wanted," Rapunzel says, sitting next to her on the bed.

"...Yes," M-C answers, fidgeting again.

Rapunzel doesn't respond, and M-C finally looks at her. Silent tears stream down Rapunzel's cheeks.

"Oh no," M-C says, fear crossing her face. "I've upset you-"

Rapunzel shakes her head aggressively and wipes at her tears with a hand. "No," Rapunzel tells her, sniffling. "No, I'm not upset."

M-C isn't reassured, and Rapunzel takes her hand. "I… I don't even know what I'm feeling. It's so much. But it's good," she clarifies. "It's a really good feeling, Cass. What you did… what you wanted, it's so thoughtful, and so sweet." She puts a hand to M-C's cheek.

M-C still looks uncertain and confused. Looking at her, Rapunzel breaks into a small laugh with tears still in her eyes, and M-C smiles nervously.

Rapunzel takes her hand back to wipe at her cheeks again, and says, "Thank you, Cass. I don't think you could know how much it means to me."

"It seems like you don't know either," M-C says, and Rapunzel laughs again.

"Yeah, I think I'm just going to have to ride out whatever this is," Rapunzel says, still feeling very lightheaded and shaky.

M-C swallows. "You could, um, do that here, if you want," she offers, gesturing to the pillows next to her.

Rapunzel nods. She curls up against the pillows next to M-C, and she both laughs and cries as M-C holds her hand.

Notes:

I actually don't have much to say on account of how it's largely written out. I had a lot of fun writing it, I hope you liked it!

Chapter 21: Recovery

The air slowly warms as the day goes on, and Rapunzel thinks she sees more ambient light coming through the clouds. It's certainly not sunny or summery, but there's already signs of the changes M-C said she'd make.

Max stays with M-C while Rapunzel and Pascal head down towards what used to be the castle's vegetable garden. "Alright Pascal, are you ready for this?" She asks, stretching her hands and arms in front of her. Pascal chirps some encouragement.

She places her hands on the ground and lets the magic inside her blaze, streaming from her hands into the ground. Immediately tendrils start sprouting from the dirt, and Pascal squeaks in excitement.

When Rapunzel finally looks up, she sees lush greenery all around her, and it doesn't wither as soon as she stands. She looks all around, finding the plants already fully matured and bearing the fruits and vegetables she sought. Pascal jumps from her shoulder to grab a raspberry from a shrub near her.

Rapunzel beams. "Let's find Max an apple tree to give him a treat," she says excitedly.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel can tell that the light filtering through the thinner clouds makes M-C nervous, so she seeks out heavy curtains to hang over her windows. It's a little sad to Rapunzel, who missed the light, but she knows M-C's comfort is a bigger priority.

M-C is doing surprisingly well for someone who lost so much blood after her injury, and again when they pulled the bolt from her. Rapunzel would have expected her to spend most of the day asleep, but while reclining in bed she flips through her journal, makes small geometric black rock sculptures she breaks shortly after, and asks Rapunzel to talk to her about anything. She even submits to hearing about the Coronan citizens, and Rapunzel tells her about everything that happened while M-C was in the wilderness after the Dark Kingdom.

Rapunzel is delighted by her presence of mind. She'd never had M-C so consistently responsive to her and stable in her emotions. In the past, even when they'd spend lengths of time together, at some point M-C would always just stop talking or have a flare of upset that Rapunzel didn't understand or say something confusing to Rapunzel.

She's sure that if she pressed M-C to talk to her about too many memories she'd get confused again, like she had that morning. So instead Rapunzel refrains from questions and enjoys easy conversation with her.

Rapunzel brings games to her room, and M-C makes a small table suspended over the bed from black rock so they'd have a surface for the boards and cards. They even play a game of charades, with Pascal on Rapunzel's team and Max on Cassandra's. The animals act for each scenario so that the humans can guess outloud what they are imitating. Unsurprisingly, Pascal ends up being the still-undefeated champion.

At one point M-C says to Rapunzel, "Seeing Pascal and Max makes me miss Owl and Fidella."

"Well, Fidella's back in the other kingdom," Rapunzel tells her. "I could ask Eugene to bring her here!"

M-C looks down immediately and mumbles that that's not necessary.

Rapunzel, knowing that M-C still has fear of how the ones in her life would respond to her now, takes her hand. "Hey, it's okay," Rapunzel tells her. "Fidella loves you too, you know. Nothing's changed that."

M-C doesn't respond.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

"And, since none of this would have been possible if not for her - to Cass," Rapunzel says, holding up her glass in a toast over the black rock table that holds their dinner. Max and Pascal dive immediately into their salads of freshly gathered produce.

M-C raises an eyebrow. "Are you giving me credit for not literally killing the plants?"

"Yes," Rapunzel responds cheerfully, sitting in front of her plate at the table that M-C had made next to her bed so they could all eat together.

M-C looks over at Pascal and Max very enthusiastically enjoying their meals, and just barely smiles.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C insists that she doesn't need supervision overnight while she sleeps, so after anxiously making M-C promise to wake her if she needs anything, Rapunzel goes to sleep in the bed beside her.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

The next day, M-C tells Rapunzel that she's thinking about letting plants grow again on the mainland. Rapunzel is delighted about this, and after talking about how she could use her magic to help things grow back quicker, she asks why M-C has changed her mind.

M-C reluctantly admits that she'd like for the animals to come back. Rapunzel is excited, but she knows that letting the plants grow back would reduce M-C's magic, and thus her hold on the cloud cover. She asks M-C if she'll be comfortable with that.

M-C answers that she'll pull back the clouds so they only cover the capital. Rapunzel smiles and holds her hand, talking about how once she's better, they'll go riding through the trees at night and see the animals together like they did the night Cassandra took her beyond the walls.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel asks if M-C feels conflict within herself because the Moonstone tricked Cassandra into taking it. M-C answers that she does not: Cassandra couldn't bear to return to Corona and go back to business as usual after everything that happened during the journey, so even without the Moonstone's influence she would have grabbed the stone for its power. Both Cassandra and the Moonstone wanted to use the other, and neither realized the other was a conscious being and what would happen trying to merge. So, M-C doesn't feel resentment towards either of them.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C heals startlingly quickly. Within just a couple days she barely has pain, and Rapunzel wakes one morning to find M-C not in her bed.

Panic flares in her for a few moments until she finds the note left behind explaining that M-C was feeling restless in the night so she went for a walk in the castle.

When Rapunzel finds her, M-C is in the dining hall, which is almost completely repaired.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

"This feels… excessive," M-C notes, glancing down at Rapunzel's hair wrapped around her body, binding her arms and legs to keep her from getting up again.

"Excessive?" Rapunzel cries. "You rebuilt an entire hall while injured!"

"Yeah, but," M-C starts, and she shifts in her restraints. "It was fine."

"Fine? You think it was fine?"

"Um, yes," M-C answers plainly. "That is what I said."

Rapunzel puts a hand to her forehead. "You're not moving for the rest of the day," she says sternly.

Raising an eyebrow M-C asks, "And how are you going to do things like cook if you've got me tangled up in your hair?"

"Pascal will do it," Rapunzel says. "Max will help. I'm not letting you out of my sight, and you're not leaving this bed."

M-C squints. "Pascal and Max cooking? The same Pascal and Max who couldn't even manage to put one drop of potion in a drink, and dumped the whole thing in instead? That Pascal and Max?"

Rapunzel puts a hand to her chin. "I forgot about that. Hey, that's great that you remembered!" She says, beaming.

"Yeah, one of the things I'd rather forget," M-C responds, making a face. "Really great."

"Well, you make a good point," Rapunzel tells her. "They probably shouldn't cook for us. But I'm still not letting you out of my sight, so you're coming to the kitchen with me."

M-C snorts. "Yes, your highness," she answers.

Rapunzel feels a bolt of distress through her. "Wait, no, it's not a-"

"I'm teasing you, Raps," M-C interrupts.

Rapunzel lets out a breath. "Okay… because it's not an order-order, it's like, a friend-order," she tries to explain again.

"I know, Raps," M-C says.

"That only comes from me caring about you and I'm not trying to contr-"

"I know Raps!" M-C tells her again.

"Okay," Rapunzel says again. "Well I'm going to untie your legs, but you've still lost arm privileges."

"Wait- what?" M-C asks incredulously.

Rapunzel frees M-C's legs, and then pulls her up, leaving her arms bound. "Let's go!" She says cheerfully, tugging M-C along with her by her hair.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Familiar with the typical schedule of the messenger pigeon's return and the ensuing arrival of supplies, Rapunzel is out by the black rock walls when her friends get to the border. Usually the horse specters would bring the supplies in without Rapunzel there so she'd never get to talk with her friends, but like everything else, this time was different. Besides the light coming through the thin clouds overhead and the warm breeze, M-C lets the walls recede for Rapunzel to meet up with Eugene and Lance during the drop-off.

They both crush her in a hug. They exchange news with her from the other kingdom, and Rapunzel talks excitedly about how well things were going with M-C.

Rapunzel is also delighted to see that they chose Fidella to bring the cart of supplies - she was hoping that they would. Planning to surprise M-C, she asks Fidella to come into the kingdom.

Fidella is not thrilled about it. She looks past Rapunzel and sees the dead landscape behind her. Rapunzel tries to insist it's okay, and Max has a brief conversation with her in horse.

Shortly after, she very uncertainly follows Rapunzel and Max into Underworld.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

"You guys stay here in the garden, okay? I'll be right back," Rapunzel tells Max and Fidella.

M-C's glad when Rapunzel invites her for a walk. Rapunzel had very much been trying to keep her in bed, but she'd been feeling restless.

When they get down to the garden, M-C freezes upon seeing Fidella. Rapunzel smiles encouragingly at her and pulls her along.

Fidella snorts and steps back when she sees M-C. Her ears and tail flick uncomfortably, and Max steps over to calm her.

M-C stops moving again when she sees Fidella's nervousness. "Hey, it's okay," Rapunzel tells her, holding her arm and walking forward. M-C follows but doesn't answer.

With Max by her side, Fidella stays still as M-C gets close. Rapunzel feels a great deal of excitement about the reunion and is delighted she could help make it happen. She smiles at Max and watches M-C expectantly when they stop in front of the horses.

M-C is silent and hesitates as she lifts her hand up towards Fidella's head to stroke her face, as she'd done hundreds of times for the years they'd been together. As her hand approaches, Fidella inclines her head forward and sniffs her tentatively. But as M-C's hand nearly touches her, Fidella pulls back and whinnies, her ears swiveling in fear. Her hooves clatter against the tiled walkway as she steps away, and then she rears back to turn and run.

M-C is frozen in place with her arm still outstretched, watching as Fidella bolts away from her. Max immediately takes off after her.

Rapunzel feels horror grip her seeing this unfold. "Cass," she starts, with no idea of what to say. M-C doesn't move or speak, standing as a statue with a stricken expression.

Not knowing what to do, she suggests they return to her room and takes M-C by the arm.

They don't see Max or Fidella again for the rest of the day.

For the first time since before Rapunzel returned to Underworld, M-C stops speaking.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

A hand shakes Rapunzel awake in the middle of the night. She looks up half-asleep to see M-C's glowing eyes and hair immediately above her.

"Cass…?" She tries to pull herself upright. "What's wrong?"

During her recovery she had told M-C to wake her at any time if she needed anything, but she feels confused by how M-C is standing over her from the edge of the bed, not reaching from the other side.

"I n-" M-C stops. Rapunzel snaps more awake at her voice.

"I need your help," M-C tells her quietly.

"Why are you up?" Rapunzel asks her, but she's immediately hushed by M-C, as if someone might overhear them and they're not two of the only five living creatures in the entire kingdom.

"Come with me," M-C says, pulling at Rapunzel's arm.

Confused but knowing questions would probably get her hushed again, Rapunzel follows M-C out of her room.

M-C brings her outside of the castle to a place Rapunzel hadn't visited in a long time: the royal stables. They were among the parts of the castle that had been severely damaged during M-C's rampage.

Rapunzel blinks in surprise. She can barely tell in the darkness, but she's sure it looks different than it had before.

"You fixed th-" Rapunzel starts, but she gets a finger pressed to her lips again.

"I know you don't want me to build things, but I had to," M-C tells her quietly. "When I was mad at you, you fixed my room, right? I- I had to do something. But I was looking at it, and it's not enough. I need- I need treats, like apples, or carrots, or grapes for her. Can you grow those for me?"

Rapunzel stares at her. She very badly wants to tell M-C that she doesn't need to do all this work, that she should return to bed to keep resting and recovering, and that Fidella will come around in her own time. But Rapunzel recognizes that her perspective doesn't matter here: it's M-C's relationship with Fidella, and M-C would know best what to do.

Rapunzel lifts a hand to lower M-C's finger from her lips. "Sure," she offers quietly. "Let's go to the castle's vegetable garden."

When they get there, Rapunzel pauses with her hands poised over the ground. "Uh," she says quietly, and M-C asks her what's wrong.

"I've never… tried to grow something, like, specific before," Rapunzel tells her. "I just kinda… sent my magic out and it did its own thing. I didn't pay attention to what I was growing or bringing back, it just… happened."

M-C tilts her head looking down at Rapunzel. "Well, right, your magic knows what to do," she tells Rapunzel. "You don't really have to think about it."

Rapunzel raises an eyebrow looking up at her. "Seriously?"

"I mean, do you think about how to move every individual muscle and tendon to take a step?" M-C asks. "You don't need to think about it, you just know what to do and your body does it for you."

Rapunzel glances back down at her hands. "Huh, I guess so. Alright, then here goes," she says and presses her hands to the ground, sending out her magic.

Within a few moments, a dozen carrot tops have sprouted in front of her, the stems thickening and lengthening rapidly. M-C bends down next to her to pull a carrot from the ground, and she grins at Rapunzel.

Rapunzel smiles back. "Next I'll make some more apples on the trees over there," She says, gesturing. "Let's put together a gift basket for her!"

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

It's well into the morning by the time they have the stables all set up for Fidella: rebuilt, swept, fresh hay strewn about (grown by Rapunzel, cut and dried by M-C), and several baskets of her favorite treats placed around.

Rapunzel assumes that Max and Fidella have been out on the mainland in one of the fields that has already begun to regrow. M-C decides that they shouldn't go try to find them, and that they should wait for the horses to return on their own.

Max comes back to the castle alone later that afternoon. Rapunzel asks him where Fidella is, and he glances back over towards the mainland with a sad expression. She asks him if Fidella wants to leave Underworld, and he nods.

Rapunzel tells him to follow her, and she shows him the restored stables with the treats laid out. He immediately dives towards the apples and Rapunzel lassos him to hold him back, explaining that they're for Fidella. "But," she adds, "If you bring her over here before you two leave, I'm sure she'd like to share some with you."

Max immediately takes off, and Rapunzel snickers at his enthusiasm. She runs back into the castle to bring M-C down before he and Fidella return.

It takes longer than Rapunzel expects for the horses to come back. M-C stands anxiously in the stables waiting, and more than once she tries to give up and leave. Rapunzel doesn't let her.

M-C stands well away from Fidella's stall and all the treats she had laid out, so when she arrives she's not too scared to investigate.

Rapunzel and M-C hear approaching hoofbeats and Max happily trots into the stable with Fidella much more cautiously in tow. M-C steps back, trying to give Fidella even more space, and bumps against the wall behind her. Rapunzel reaches for her hand to hold reassuringly.

Max rushes over to pick up one of the baskets to show Fidella. She slowly walks over to her stall, occasionally glancing towards the two humans across the space. Max whinnies at her as if to ask permission to eat some of her treats. She gives him a look, but must have let him know with some unverbalized cue that it was okay, as he dives into the apples.

Fidella spends more time investigating the stables. She looks at the other stalls, noses the hay under her hooves, and walks over to the storage for riding equipment and grooming tools. Finally she returns to her stall and again looks over the baskets of treats laid around.

Rapunzel expects her to eat some of the treats as Max is enthusiastically doing, but after sniffing each basket in turn, she looks up and starts walking towards Rapunzel and M-C.

M-C tenses and Rapunzel uses her thumb to stroke her hand. When Fidella gets near, Rapunzel drops M-C's hand and steps away.

M-C stands frozen. She doesn't try to lift her hand as Fidella stops in front of her and inclines her head forwards. Fidella begins to snuffle at her hair and lips it gently. M-C still doesn't move, and Fidella bumps her face with her long nose, nickering gently at her. The spell of fear on M-C is finally broken, and with tears falling from her eyes she throws her arms around Fidella's neck and buries her face in her mane. Fidella rests her head against M-C's back.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel and M-C spend the rest of the day with Max and Fidella. As much as Rapunzel wants to tell M-C to rest, she stays quiet and lets M-C decide what she's up for. So for the first time in over a year, they groom the horses together and go riding as they would during their journey and before.

Rapunzel doesn't push M-C to leave the capital during the day, when the thin cloud cover over the mainland lets too much of the midday sunlight through. But they race through the empty capital streets and wherever they stop, Rapunzel uses her magic to bring back the flowers in window baskets, the trees along the streets, and the ivy on walls.

While they rest in the town square by the fountain, Rapunzel grows flowers to weave into garlands for the horses and crowns for her and M-C. M-C snorts and rolls her eyes, but she doesn't take it off.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

They go to sleep very early due to their lack of sleep the night before and exhausting day. The next day M-C is more inclined towards rest again, so they stay around the castle. With M-C, Fidella, and Pascal in her company, Rapunzel regrows the rest of the castle gardens while Max surveys the damage done to the armory, guard barracks, and castle prison.

That evening just after the sun goes down, Rapunzel asks M-C if she would like to ride out to the mainland. As dusk fades, the large bioluminescent fungi among the trees begin to glow, and Rapunzel asks M-C to choose a location for Rapunzel to begin regrowing the vegetation. M-C suggests the woods around the lagoon first, and golden light weaves through the woods as trees unpetrify and undergrowth sprouts again from the forest floor.

Notes:

A horse girl and her horse…

Chapter 22: Love

Within a few days, greenery has sprouted again across the mainland under the sunlight, with pockets of woods and fields entirely restored by Rapunzel's magic. Warm breezes rustle leaves across the kingdom.

Changing M-C's bandages, Rapunzel sees the wound is almost entirely healed.

Knowing that M-C wanted the animals to return, she suggests that they leave Underworld one night to speak to the animals in the wilderness beyond the walls and share that their home has been restored. M-C is apprehensive, but Max, Fidella, and Pascal show approval for the idea, so she agrees.

M-C opens gateways in her black rock wall, and they ride into the woods to find creatures. The mission reminds Rapunzel of one of the challenges during the Contest of the Crowns, where she and Cassandra had to befriend as many woodland creatures as possible within a time limit. She asks if M-C if she remembers, and she doesn't. So Rapunzel says they'll recreate it now, and whoever convinces the most animals to return to the kingdom within the hour wins. She, Max, and Pascal take off with M-C shouting after them that she and Fidella will win.

It is only later that Rapunzel realizes that creatures tend to be uneasy and scared of M-C, which could make her sad if she tried to reach out to them. But when they meet up later that night, M-C shows no sign of distress.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

After they return to the castle that night and as they lay in bed in the dark, Rapunzel brings up a topic she'd been avoiding.

"So, Cass…" She starts hesitantly. "When we were out there… did you see any sign of Owl?"

M-C doesn't answer, and for a moment Rapunzel thinks that she won't, or that she'd already fallen asleep.

"No." The answer comes plainly, without emotion.

Rapunzel frowns into the darkness over her bed. "I… I haven't seen him since the Dark Kingdom," she tells M-C. She looks to her side, at the gently glowing blue next to her, M-C facing away from her. "Did you see him any time after that?"

M-C doesn't answer again, and Rapunzel waits patiently.

"I think so," she answers quietly. "I don't remember well. He… he kept trying to… I didn't know, I was confused. He was trying to scratch at me, now I think it was to get my attention, to get me to follow him home, but I didn't understand. So I-" M-C's voice cuts off, and Rapunzel turns fully towards her, staring at her back.

"I attacked him," M-C finally says. "I think I hurt him. He- he left, and I didn't see him again." M-C's voice breaks. "I don't think he's coming back."

Rapunzel feels a wave of grief and knows it's just a fraction of what M-C's feeling. She reaches a hand out to rub M-C's back. Not feeling M-C pull away, she shuffles closer until her body is pressed against M-C, and holds her.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Rapunzel had expected that they would have to spend several days, if not weeks, traveling out of Underworld to speak with the animals to bring back the wildlife population. But news of their restored home spreads independently among the creatures, and over just a few days dozens and then hundreds of animals return.

For a while, the creatures remain on the mainland, not setting foot in the shadowed and colder capital city. But eventually Rapunzel is delighted to see the castle mice and rats return, followed soon by cats. She hears birdsong when walking through the capital and the gardens again.

One morning, M-C doesn't come down to the kitchen for breakfast, so Rapunzel goes looking for her. She finds M-C in a hallway on her way down, distracted by petting one of the castle cats. Seeing one receiving attention, other cats approach her as well. M-C's beaming while they rub up against her.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C rebuilds more of the castle, and Rapunzel helps her. Soon it is nearly fully restored.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C's sleeping next to Rapunzel every morning. She allows more sunlight into the kingdom, and Rapunzel grows more plants. Rapunzel decides the curtains on her windows aren't enough to keep out the light, and she builds a blanket fort around her bed for them both to sleep in so it would be dark for M-C.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

M-C fully dissipates the clouds, including over the capital and castle. She stands at the castle's entry in the shadows, staring at the sunlight in the courtyard. Rapunzel stands with her, and M-C steps out into the direct sunlight. Standing in the sun she tells Rapunzel that she remembers why she hated it: after the Sundrop disappeared, the sunlight felt too much like her presence. Feeling something like her when she was gone was too painful, and so M-C used magic so she would never feel it. Rapunzel hugs her as she starts to cry.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Since M-C is no longer exerting her magic on the environment around her at all anymore - no more clouds, or low temperatures, or petrified plantlife - her hair and eyes stop glowing all the time, since they only glow when she uses magic. Unilluminated, her hair is a midnight-blue-black like the black rock spikes. Her eyes are a blue-gray. She looks much more like her original Cassandra self.

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

One night M-C asks again what Rapunzel wants. Rapunzel doesn't want to answer about long-term so she says that right now, she would love to listen to the stars.

Rapunzel assumes M-C will bring her out onto one of the terraces for stargazing, but she brings Rapunzel to the top of the tower that once held the star platform. At the edge where the platform used to be, M-C holds out her bare right hand to Rapunzel and asks, "Do you trust me?"

Rapunzel takes her hand and feels her magic flare, and her hair begins to glow gold as M-C's begins to glow blue. They step together out onto the open air, and a spot of blue magic appears under their feet to hold them up. Rapunzel laughs, and they begin to dance over the air, each step creating new glowing blue stone that dims to black as they move on. They dance on air, with the night sea stretching into the horizon before them and the stars burning brightly as they chime overhead.

"This is incredible!" Rapunzel cries, delighted.

"It's like I told you," M-C tells her gently, "together, we can do anything."

They rebuild the star platform with their dance. When they stop, Rapunzel is breathless both with excitement and their magic. She sees how M-C is looking at her so fondly, and M-C tells her very earnestly, "I love you, Raps." It's the first time M-C has said it - and Rapunzel responds "I love you too, Cass". In each others' arms still looking at each other, after a couple gay moments, they both start to lean in for a kiss,

But Rapunzel turns her head to put her face against M-C's neck instead, saying, "I'm sorry, it wouldn't be right."

M-C tenses, and she responds very pained, "Of course," before trying to pull away.

R: no- wait, that's not what I meant- I mean… you still don't… remember everything. What if there's something missing that would affect… this? I- I would be taking advantage of you
M-C, desperate: there's nothing missing!
R: [gives a sad smile] when did we first meet?
M-C, after hesitating: I was assigned as your lady-in-waiting-
R, shaking her head: we met before that. As long as you can't remember all the time we spent together… it wouldn't be right.
M-C, stiffly: and what if I never remember it all?
R: you will. I know you will.

She holds M-C's face and tells her again, "I will never give up on you." She pauses before adding, "Or on us."

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

They Go Swimming In The Lagoon For Realsies This Time

(M-C isn't wearing her gauntlet or using magic and the sea creatures don't flee from her and they just have a nice time)

☽☀☽☀☾☀☾

Three months after Rapunzel returned to Underworld, M-C agrees to let some of the Coronans back.

They're standing on Rapunzel's balcony together looking out over the restored kingdom and planning for who would return first, when they hear a "Hoo," behind them.

They turn to see Owl perched on the railing behind them, tilting his head at M-C.

Notes:

Once M-C has gotten nearly completely better - particularly with the huge development of welcoming back not just animals but other people - Owl returns to her.

Chapter 23: Corona

This is the least fleshed out because it interests me the least RIP

Coronans are welcomed back into the kingdom. First, Eugene and Lance; then the Coronans she grew up with who were always nice to her, like Monty, Stan, Pete, Xavier; then the pub thugs and Angry and Catalina; then Quirin and Varian…

All the reintroductions go well. M-C is confused sometimes, particularly with Varian. But she never lashes out or gets angry.

Next, her father - who she's terrified of. Rapunzel holds her hand and even then she's shaking, and it takes a long time of talking with him before she finally begins to relax. They both apologize to each other, and he hugs her.

Frederic is an entirely different story. Knowing he's a huge trigger for her rage, M-C says she shouldn't see him again anywhere her matrix is. Rapunzel knows that she means that if she's able to do so, she would kill him immediately if she's sent into a rage by seeing him.

Rapunzel suggests they meet again on the sea on separate ships. (So that M-C doesn't have a matrix connection and can't summon black rocks from the ground to kill him).

Rapunzel wonders if this is excessive, considering how stable M-C has been - but she knows it'd be better to be careful, especially if M-C thinks it's possible she could lose control of herself.

On the sea, the two ships approach each other, and when they're over 20 meters apart and M-C sees Frederic on the other deck, she does fly into a rage. She resummons her armor and sends a huge spike of black rock from the hull of the ship she's on, using that connection to freeze the sea around it immediately, and sends more black rock out and through the ice to freeze more of the sea to form a bridge to the other ship. Of course, as soon as it all even began she lunged onto the first structure of ice and began running across it as she made more.

Rapunzel shouts and jumps onto the ice to run after her. She uses her hair to lasso M-C as she approaches the other ship, and tries to restrain her. The ice under both of them cracks and they fall into the sea.

As M-C had been afraid of the first time Rapunzel tried to ask her to swim in the lagoon, her armor makes her sink immediately. Still enraged and not fully understanding what's happening, M-C claws at the water, but has forgotten both how to swim and that her armor is weighing her down, and she disappears immediately under the surface. With Rapunzel's hair entangled around her, Rapunzel is pulled under the water as well.

Rapunzel's terrified, knowing she's not able to swim with enough strength to bring them both back to the surface, and unable to shout to M-C to remove her armor.

She's started to fully panic when she's abruptly grabbed from above, and she's pulled towards the surface.

Her father has hold of her, and he's grasping a rope that others on his ship are pulling on. Rapunzel grabs her hair, feeling the weight on it and hoping that M-C didn't somehow escape it.

She and her father are pulled onto the ship. Rapunzel asks the others - her mother, father, the ships' crew who'd just been helping - to pull M-C up. They do, and M-C is dragged from the water, coughing and still in her armor, and she's dropped on the deck.

It's only then that Rapunzel realizes she just brought M-C within killing range of her father. She moves towards him, recognizing she might need to fight M-C as she'd done in the throne room when M-C first returned to Corona. Frederic apparently has the same thought, as he puts himself between M-C and Arianna.

But M-C doesn't lunge for him. Untangled from Rapunzel's hair she pushes herself up from the deck and looks at him, silent and still like a statue. For a few moments there is no motion except for the rocking of the ship, and no sound but ice knocking into the hull.

M-C stands fully and Rapunzel cautiously walks towards her.

M-C finally speaks to observe that Frederic had saved Rapunzel from the sea.

She tilts her head back, looking at the sky in thought.

Frederic steps towards her and apologizes for what he'd done to the Sundrop. He tells her he didn't know what would happen, and didn't realize what and who the Sundrop was. He tells her he never would have done it if he had known.

M-C doesn't speak for a while. Finally she notes that he did it to save the one he loved, and Frederic tells her yes. M-C notes that now he loves the Sundrop as his child, and he says more than anything.

She doesn't respond, and Rapunzel approaches her. Rapunzel asks if she's okay, and M-C tells her yes.

Arianna comes over to meet M-C, and M-C acts as she did as a lady-in-waiting around Arianna. But Arianna hugs her and says she missed her, which confuses M-C.

They're able to return to Corona's port, and M-C is no longer enraged by Frederic.

Notes:

I intend to write more on this, obviously. But I thought two things about Frederic: 1) M-C would still hate him, and would certainly fly into a rage and try to kill him; and 2) M-C would need to see how Frederic cares so much for Rapunzel (the Sundrop) now - and Rapunzel for him - before she can, well not FORGIVE him, but at least stop trying to kill him.

Chapter 24: Restored

Notes:

This is another chapter that's lacking currently and underwhelming so I'd edit it, but it gets the point across

Much of the kingdom is back to normal. Now that it's structurally fully repaired, people even return to the castle and help clean it and bring in new furniture. (It's still half black rock, but those rooms are furnished now too, and most of the black rock is painted - many with murals by Rapunzel that M-C helped with.)

M-C stays in Rapunzel's room (rather than getting her own bedroom) - she sleeps from dawn to the afternoon each day. Rapunzel sleeps from the middle of the night to the late morning so their sleep schedules align mostly. The few hours before M-C wakes up, Rapunzel's helping her parents with royal duties. The few hours after Rapunzel's gone to sleep, M-C's staring at the stars and writing.

One day, M-C's snaps awake earlier than usual. (It coincides with the last room being cleaned of rock dust and minor debris.) She rushes to find Rapunzel, who's talking to some trade diplomats to reinstate their agreements, which had dissolved the year Corona was a wasteland. M-C ignores the diplomats to hug Rapunzel and very excitedly tell her that she can remember everything. That there are no more pieces. Rapunzel's parents take over the trade meeting, and Rapunzel goes to their star platform to talk with M-C.

M-C tells Rapunzel who they were - celestials who lived on the divine order plane Asterium. (Verbal language isn't really a thing on divine planes, so these words were made up by those on semidivine planes, roughly translated by M-C into English.)

She tells Rapunzel all about how they reunited and about their home there (at least, what can be conveyed with words). She tells Rapunzel about how they would explore different planes together.

She tells her everything about what happened upon their imprisonment on earth. She tells Rapunzel that she kept accusing the Coronans of betraying them because she was confused between them and the celestials.

And she reveals that Rapunzel couldn't do the healing spell because she had exchanged those powers between them. She reverses the exchange, and asks if Rapunzel would sing the healing spell to restore her hand. She does. M-C's hand is fixed. M-C thanks Rapunzel for not giving up on her. They say I love you.

R: so, um, if you can remember everything- I mean, we had thought- I don't know if you still-
[M-C kisses her very excitedly]

They kiss a bunch more. M-C observes that they can finally cut Rapunzel's hair. Rapunzel laughs.

M-C asks Rapunzel what she wants to do now that Corona is fixed and M-C can remember everything. Knowing that her parents can handle ruling Corona for many years to come, Rapunzel thinks for a moment before admitting that she would really like to see more of the world and have adventures to fill up her journal. And hear more of M-C's stories. M-C smiles and says that they can do that.

Notes:

M-C's mind pieces problem is only resolved once all of her other problems are resolved. Once M-C reconciles with Rapunzel, and overcomes the fears caused by her abandonment trauma (accepting Rapunzel's help and love), and recognizes that Rapunzel loves and respects her as the Sundrop did the Moonstone; once M-C loves animals again and restores the kingdom fully; once M-C welcomes back the Coronans and rebuilds some of her relationships; and once she has learned to let go of her anger; she becomes fully fused and her mind is restored.

Meanwhile, after all of this, Rapunzel finally accepts and expresses what she wants to do: embrace her freedom, have adventures, and explore with the one she loves most.

The story doesn't end here …

Bonus: Post-Story

I have a lot of ideas for adventures that M-C and Rapunzel go on together after the story. I considered working them into this fic in pieces through dream sequences, but then I decided that Rapunzel's dreams wouldn't be actual visions of the future. But, here's a piece of one adventure that I'd typed. (Also, I just call M-C "Cassandra" from here on because that's what she goes by.)

(Side note that Rapunzel can cut her hair now, but since she often accesses her magic, it remains blonde and it grows at the same rate it did in her tower. So she needs haircuts fairly often lol)

Early during their travels, they hear about a city with a huge university, and head there next. The city is by the sea and very Venice-like with canals, and they go first to the university campus. Rapunzel and Cassandra explore the lecture halls and go to its huge library, which is bigger than any library Rapunzel had seen before. In her excitement, Rapunzel accidentally knocks into a man, who doesn't mind since he's delighted by Rapunzel's zest for knowledge, and they learn he's the headmaster. Rapunzel asks him if the university could make a branch in another kingdom, thinking that she'd love to have a university open in Corona, and the headmaster tells her that's up to the leaders of the kingdom, and whether they would offer the funds and space for it. When Rapunzel tells him that that's no problem, he recognizes her as Corona's barefoot princess. Rapunzel expresses that she'll write to her parents immediately.

Later when Rapunzel and Cassandra are exploring the city via the canals, a gondolier tells them about a cursed island in the nearby archipelago. The next day, still in the city, they hear a song performed about the cursed island and the legend that the island will only be liberated when the sun and moon descend from the heavens to save it. Cassandra and Rapunzel exchange a look, and they know they should investigate. Rapunzel goes to the city's university to get more information about the cursed island while Cassandra tries to rent a sailboat for them to go to the island.

So here's a piece I have written about that.

"Alright, spill. What trouble are we getting ourselves into this time?" Cassandra asks from where she's tying down the boom to the side of the small sailboat to catch the wind.

"It's not trouble, Cass," Rapunzel reminds her with a smile, looking up from the map and compass she's holding onto tightly in her lap so they wouldn't get blown away in the sea breeze.

"I think 'cursed island' might be the definition of trouble," Cassandra responds with a raised eyebrow, glancing back at her at the tiller. "Every shipman I spoke to trying to charter a boat told me off when I said what we needed it for. Apparently no one's ever come back from the island, so none of them wanted to rent a boat when as far as they're concerned they'd never get it back. One of them said I'd be better off putting hot coals in my eye sockets than sailing to the island."

"Well, that does seem to be the public's consensus," Rapunzel says thoughtfully. "Wait, if no one would rent to you, how'd you get this sailboat?"

"I lied about where we were going," Cassandra answers plainly, looking out over the water ahead of them. "I figured it'd be fine since they're just scared they wouldn't get their boat back, but we'll be coming back." She glances at Rapunzel and adds wryly, "We are coming back, right?"

"Yes," Rapunzel answers confidently. "If anyone can uncurse this island, it's us."

"Riiight," Cassandra responds. "But do we actually know anything about this place? What'd the headmaster say about it?"

"He knew a lot!" Rapunzel tells her excitedly, gesturing animatedly with the map in her hand. "There used to be a branch of the University there. I mean, presumably there still is, past all the fog. It was their main library, even bigger than the one they have in the city! The way he described it to me it must have been even bigger than Corona castle. People from all over the world went there to research and would bring books for the collection. And there was this professor who was so dedicated to sharing knowledge, that even after he died his ghost stayed in the library to keep reading everything brought in and you could ask him, like, anything and he'd know the answer."

Cassanrda pulls a face. "A ghost? He might be the one behind this. We don't have a good track record with ghosts."

"Cass, don't be prejudiced," Rapunzel scolds her. "Don't you remember Ruthless Ruth? There are nice ghosts. I was hoping that once we get to the island, he can help us figure out what happened."

Cassandra groans. "Is that what we're banking on? Did you learn anything else?"

"Well," Rapunzel continues, "the fog and the curse started a couple centuries ago, and sailors who were out on the water at the time said that it was right after a shooting star fell from the night sky and landed there."

"Ah, that's more like it," Cassandra responds, grinning at her. "Maybe this is up our alley."

"I tooold you," Rapunzel says in a singsong voice.

"Well forgive me for not believing some old wives' tales," Cassandra teases her back. "Although I'm not sure old sailor's tales are much better. Is there anything else?"

Rapunzel sighs. "Just what everyone in the city already knew. No one's come back from the island in centuries. Some people think the island has disappeared entirely, sunken into the sea and now there's some huge whirlpool in the fog to take down all the ships that go in."

"Mmm, promising," Cassandra notes. "Although the island disappearing isn't too much of a stretch. It's possible the Veil was torn there and the island got sucked in. Don't know why there'd be the fog, though…"

"I'm assuming it's a regular curse. If the Veil was torn, wouldn't we be able to sense it?"

[...]

Tragically, that's all I have written lol

"The Veil" refers to the barrier between planes that keeps them separate. When the Veil is torn, you can walk from one plane into another.

There's obviously a lot more to this adventure, but this is what you get right now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Epilogue

I have a premise for an epilogue that sets up another story:

After a while, Rapunzel decides it's unfair that Cassandra can remember Asterium and she can't. Rapunzel loves learning about and exploring new places, and the thought that she spent millennia with Cassandra in a beautiful cosmic place that Cassandra can barely even describe drives her crazy. Besides how she's so curious about the place itself, she wants to remember all the time she spent with Cassandra. While she and Cassandra are travelling they find some magic artifact that can grant a wish, and Rapunzel desperately wants to use it to restore her memories. Cassandra is apprehensive of the idea and thinks that it could put Rapunzel through the same broken mind ordeal that she had dealt with, and that it wouldn't be worth it.

Rapunzel says that she's in a much different place than Cassandra. Cassandra had been fused violently, crashing both of their minds together, including two decades of simultaneous memories. Both the Moonstone and (not-M-C)Cassandra were filled with anger and had no support system and had a lot of personal problems. ("Thanks Raps" "I had to deal with it, I can say it")

Meanwhile Rapunzel is happy where she's at, surrounded by friends and family, and with Cassandra. None of the memories would overlap with ones she already has. Her main concern that she'd remember and be distraught about from her memories would be being apart from the Moonstone, which is already resolved - Cassandra would be right in front of her when she remembered everything.

Cassandra is swayed. She says they should do it back in Corona, surrounded by familiar things to help ground her immediately.

So one day in her bedroom with Cassandra and her friends there, Rapunzel wishes to have her memories back.

She passes out, and Cassandra catches her. After a few moments, she wakes up and looks up into Cassandra's face.

She freaks out. Immediately. Severely. With a blast of energy she slams Cassandra across the room. Looking around she sees she's surrounded by walls, and she blows it all up. She summons wings of light and takes off into the sky.

Cassandra knows that Rapunzel, in her panic, might flee somewhere entirely unfamiliar to her, which would prevent her from recovering.

But Cassandra cannot fly. So Cassandra and their friends - Eugene, Lance, Keira, Catalina, Varian - jump into an airship and go to find Rapunzel.

Notes:

Her mind breaks like Cassandra's did. Because Rapunzel's got so much trauma. The girl was trapped in a damn tower for eighteen years. She just got slammed with 1) incoherent memories of a divine plane nothing like the mortal world, which - like Cassandra - her tiny human brain cannot readily process, and 2) memories of being trapped as a goddamn flower for millenia. Good god does it make her insane. She did not recognize Cassandra, much like how Cassandra didn't recognize Rapunzel/the Sundrop when she first returned to Corona. She didn't recognize anything.

She cannot be in a room. She can barely even stand on the ground, afraid of being bound to it again. So she flies off. (feral! bird!)

And also this lets Cassandra deal with helping Rapunzel recover from her traumas. Itsequality.gif

The premise for the story is repetitive, although (besides how her affliction isn't the same mind pieces problem M-C had) I can think of ways to make the story entirely different:

The Sundrop/Rapunzel's personality is profoundly different than the Moonstone/Cassandra, which means where Cassandra ended up making a solitary and highly guarded death kingdom when insane, Rapunzel will be entirely opposite. She will try to help… everyone. But she will be entirely nuts about it and have flares of freaking out where she blows things up. She will be the most unstable blessing/curse ever placed upon the communities she adopts as her Helping Projects. Meanwhile it's not just Cassandra trying to find and stabilize Rapunzel, but all her friends as well.

Sequel: Sunbird Rampant

I wrote up very disorganized and casual thoughts on the beginning of the sequel so you're getting them too lol

I would include an insane-Rapunzel POV in the narrative in addition to a Cassandra POV - the first people Rapunzel encounters in her fleeing is a trading airship being attacked by pirates. Rapunzel sees conflict between people and cannot handle it. She immediately flies down and tells them to stop. All of the people are baffled. A flying girl? Is she some kind of angel? Rapunzel sees weapons in the pirates' hands and makes the metal so hot that they're forced to drop the weapons, and she melts them. She tells them they have to make up. She makes the pirates sit down with the traders to discuss their feelings. She grows a bouquet of flowers and puts it into the pirate captain's hands, telling him to give them to the trade captain. She shoves the airships up against each other and brings the wood to life to seal them together, and then wraps vines around the whole thing like a present. She makes everyone hug. Then she flies off, happy to have resolved the problem. (She did not resolve the problem.)

Eventually, Rapunzel finds an airship city on a floating island in the sky. (How is it flying? Magic, magnets, who knows). The people there live far enough from the Seven Kingdoms that they don't know Rapunzel's language (English? French? A vague "common" tongue? Who knows) except for traders who travel everywhere. Rapunzel doesn't like setting foot on the ground even on a floating island, but there are parts of the city that extend off the edge of the island to create docks and hold airship machinery that allow the people to move their city through the sky, which she doesn't mind landing on. Otherwise she flies everywhere, or lands on houses or trees.

The city is grand and bustling with people and she loves it. The people are deeply confused by this flying girl with glowing hair who speaks some foreign language and spent her first days there growing flowers everywhere, healing their sick and injured, and singing at random. The few travellers who can speak to Rapunzel report that she doesn't know who she is, or why she's there. The people wonder if she's some kind of nature spirit.

A few days in, enough memories of Corona get through to Rapunzel that she crafts an elaborate delusion that the city is Corona. She chooses random citizens to be her mother, father, Cassandra, Eugene… everyone. (She even chooses a mouse to be Pascal.) These people are deeply confused when the girl suddenly becomes very affectionate with them and speaks to them as if she's having a conversation, when they can't understand each other.

She also, in this time, has had a few of her terrified and incoherent meltdowns where she blows things up. And she took various items from the city's outdoor market: books, paints, and a sword. She started painting murals everywhere of plants and animals and landscapes and ornate designs. She presented the sword to the girl she calls Cassandra. For each item she took, she left behind piles of small stones as if in payment.

It's hotly debated what to do about her. Some people insist that they have to let her stay because they don't want to cause a spirit offense, and she has worked miracles for them. Others fear her unpredictability and explosive powers, and they want to drive her off before she causes worse problems.

But they have no idea how to get rid of her. Sometimes she flies off, but she always comes back. Those who can speak to her report that she thinks the place is her home. They watch Rapunzel interact with the people she thinks are her loved ones, and confirm that the girl thinks they're other people. The traders who can speak to her try to explain that she's mistaken, but it's like she doesn't even hear them.

When Cassandra and co.'s airship arrives at the city - it took them weeks to track her down, since Cassandra can't sense Rapunzel through the air, her matrix only extends through the ground - it's immediately obvious that Rapunzel is there due to the sheer amount of flowers and all the paintings everywhere. Eugene and Lance, having traveled a lot, know the city's language and ask people if they've seen "a girl with long hair, might be glowing, about yea tall, might be flying?"

Meanwhile Cassandra and the others start walking away from their docked airship, calling for Rapunzel. After a little while she appears having heard their voices, and Cassandra tries to talk to her and tell her to come home.

This is the wrong move, as Rapunzel doesn't recognize Cassandra and has already decided that she is home in Corona and surrounded by her loved ones, so seeing someone that she has strong, confusing emotional associations with show up and tell her to come "home" brings her to one conclusion:

That is Gothel.

Not only is it Gothel, but it's Gothel who stole the Moonstone. Rapunzel freaks out. She thinks that Gothel is back to take her again, and she has taken her lover to keep prisoner as well. She shouts that she won't go back to the tower, and she uses her magic to break the black rock under the Moonstone that adhered it to Cassandra's bones, grows vines over her own hand to shoot thorns out like talons, and dives down to tear it out of Cassandra's chest.

Which she does. Cassandra is knocked over by the force of her attack. She's on the ground, bleeding from her chest. Rapunzel flies off a little ways again, holding the bloody rock.

Eugene and the rest are terrified for Cassandra. They have no idea what would happen to her without the Moonstone. Eugene helps her sit up, and she tells them that losing the stone doesn't mean anything. Like the dead flower after the Sundrop spirit had been transferred to Rapunzel, what used to be the Moonstone is just a regular opal now. She is the Moonstone.

Rapunzel doesn't seem to think so. Her delusion makes her think that the rock still is the Moonstone. She tells it that she'll take care of her.

Word had spread about newcomers looking for the spirit, and many of Rapunzel's "Coronan citizens" have arrived at the docks to see what's happening. Rapunzel flies down to "Cassandra" and gives her the stone, telling her that it's hers. (The girl is not jazzed about being handed a bloody rock.) Rapunzel repeats that she'll take care of her.

She turns back towards Cassandra very determinedly, and with a blast of magic she sends Cassandra flying over the edge of the city, falling into open air.

Cassandra very, very quickly constructs a grappling hook from black rock and throws it, creating more chain as it flies, and it catches on some machinery under the city. She starts to climb back up. The "Coronan citizens" are shouting in shock, and "Cassandra" begs Rapunzel to rescue the girl she threw off the island. Rapunzel, of course, has no idea what she's saying. The group of Rapunzel's friends, panicked, look over the edge where Cassandra fell off and see her holding onto the chain.

They decide not to indicate that Cassandra is still on the ship, thinking Rapunzel would fly down and make her fall. Eugene tries to tell Rapunzel who they are, and that it was Cassandra she just launched off of the city.

When he says that they're her friends, she very cheerfully says that everyone is her friend. When he tries to clarify who they are specifically - and who Cassandra is - Rapunzel doesn't believe him, obviously. Worse, she thinks they're imposters. She's about to send them off the edge of the city as well, when Lance interrupts to clarify that they're actors. A traveling group of thespians. They can be anyone, really. He gives a theatrical bow.

Rapunzel is delighted by this. She says she would like to see their production. Lance says of course, and Eugene pulls him aside into a group huddle with the others to try to come up with a plan, now knowing that 1) Cassandra just got accused of being Gothel and shot off the city, and 2) Rapunzel insists that she is in Corona and is surrounded by her friends and she doesn't recognize them or believe who they are.

Lance tells him that putting on a play is the plan. She's obviously in her own world and doesn't believe anything they'll say directly, so they have to get through to her another way. He says that stories are a way to experience events and emotion in a removed, low-stakes position. He thinks they can remind her of her true life by acting out events from it.

Eugene thinks this is the most harebrained scheme he's heard in months. Keira and Catalina love it. Varian, after years of hanging out with Xavier, thinks that what Lance is saying about the nature of stories has merit.

Meanwhile, Cassandra has managed to claw her way back to their airship. She hides and rips up some fabrics to press against the deep scrapes on her chest while trying to think of some way to get Rapunzel to touch her. She thinks if Rapunzel physically feels the Moonstone's power against her, she would certainly remember who Cassandra is.

Rapunzel asks the traveling troupe of actors if they would like a tour of Corona. (Some of the traders ask if they would like a real tour of the city, not the girl's delusional version, and they say it's fine.) She introduces them to the "Coronans" and Eugene is appalled to see that the man she thinks is Eugene is just of average looks. Eugene and Lance explain to the "Coronans" that the girl is their friend who is a human fused with a celestial spirit and she just got her mind broken so she thinks that they're her loved ones, no big deal. Rapunzel hangs on "Cassandra"'s arm frequently, and "Cassandra" tells the troupe of actors via the traders that she would really like it if the flying girl would leave her alone because she has things to do.

On their airship, Cassandra makes herself a mask and cloak from black rock and uses it to follow the tour group from afar. Eventually Rapunzel flies off, and Cassandra sees their friends entering a building. She follows and finds them in the hall of what is likely a public structure speaking to some of the locals - many "Coronan citizens" - with Eugene and Lance translating. The locals startle at the appearance of a person masked and cloaked in black, but she removes the disguise and Eugene explains that "that's Cassandra and she's just like that".

Lance tells Cassandra about their theatrical plan and that the locals will let them use an outdoor amphitheater for the affair, and Cassandra cannot believe it. She says it's the dumbest plan she's ever heard. But she doesn't have any better ideas so they start discussing exactly what events to act out for Rapunzel, and how. Cassandra shares with them her idea of getting Rapunzel to touch her somehow to flare her magic and help her remember who Cassandra is.

The next day the "Coronan citizens" join the audience with Rapunzel, despite how they won't be able to understand the lines. Cassandra made props from black rock, which were then painted over. Cassandra keeps a mask on in case Rapunzel would identify her as Gothel again and acts as the stage hand. Lance, Keira, and Catalina all have done actual acting and classes in the past few years, and improvise most dialogue as Eugene narrates and Varian takes minimal-speaking roles.

It's a mess, obviously.

The last scene is the Sundrop and Moonstone being reunited after being kept apart for so long. Cassandra in a moon mask stands on stage, and Eugene shares that they'll need a volunteer from the audience. Cassandra walks to the edge of the stage and puts her hand out towards Rapunzel, who is flying shortly above the amphitheater's seats.

Rapunzel had started off the production with her regular cheerful self, but her demeanor shifted during the play. She looks very uncertainly at the masked actor in front of her, but puts her hand out to meet hers.

When Rapunzel takes Cassandra's hand, Cassandra very gently draws Rapunzel towards her so that she's levitating in front of the stage. Staring at Cassandra's hand with a wondering expression, Rapunzel puts her other hand up to feel it as well, and touches it exploratorily with her fingertips all over. Cassandra waits patiently, aware that this was also how she first touched the Moonstone's black rocks with her roots when they found each other again millennia ago. The rest of their friends watch expectantly, hoping that the play broke her delusion and contact with Cassandra reminded her of who she is.

Finally Rapunzel reaches up and removes Cassandra's mask to look at her face. Cassandra's expression is soft, her eyes and hair glowing blue, and Rapunzel stares at her for a moment before saying, "it's you" quietly in recognition. Her expression becomes distressed and she tells Cassandra, "I don't want to be trapped again".

Cassandra tells Rapunzel that she won't be, and Rapunzel asks her how she can be sure. Cassandra promises that she'll protect her.

Rapunzel smiles sadly and tells her that she didn't. That she had tried to protect Rapunzel before and Rapunzel was still taken. That Cassandra couldn't keep them from being trapped and bound in the mortal world, nor keep her from being taken and trapped in a tower. That Cassandra can't promise that she would keep Rapunzel safe, because she had failed.

She drops Cassandra's hand while Cassandra stares at her in horror. Rapunzel apologizes and tells her that she doesn't need someone to protect her. She says that she won't be trapped again. And she flies away.

Cassandra shouts her name desperately while Owl and Pascal share a look. While the group had traveled in the airship, Varian made a device: a small gadget that would send out radio waves, and a radar that, within a certain radius, could pick up the direction that they were coming from. He said that if Rapunzel would keep trying to fly away from them, they could try to use a tracker on her to know where she was headed. Cassandra had been skeptical and shared that she doubted they'd be able to secure it on Rapunzel without her being afraid of it and destroying it immediately.

Pascal jumps on Varian and rummages through the pockets of his apron to grab the tracker, and he leaps onto Owl as he flies by.

As Cassandra sinks to her knees, they take off after Rapunzel.

The temperature in the amphitheater drops immediately. Cassandra stares at nothing in front of her, but her hair still glows blue. Eugene sees black rock start encasing her hands.

He rushes over to grab Cassandra by the shoulders and shake her. He tells her to snap out of it and that they need to get to the airship to go after Rapunzel.

Cassandra finally looks at him, but she doesn't speak.

Eugene: Snap out of it Cass, you know she didn't mean it. How many horrible things did you say to her when you were nuts?
Cassandra: It doesn't matter if she means it or not. She's right. I tried as hard as I could, I always tried as hard as I could and it wasn't good enough. She's better off without me.
Eugene: She's clearly not, as she is INSANE. Get it together Cassandra. We have to follow her so that she can get better. You can't just give up on her.
Cassandra: I'm not giving up on her. She's right that she doesn't need me. She doesn't want me. I should stay away from her. I can't protect her.
Eugene: And what, she can do a better job of protecting herself? You weren't the only one who couldn't stop the terrible things from happening to you both. You said yourself that she's objectively stronger than you, and she couldn't do anything either.
Cassandra: It's different. It's my job to protect her and I failed. She shouldn't need to protect herself because I should be able to do it. But I couldn't.
Eugene: What do you mean it's your job?
Cassandra: That's how it's always been. She takes care of me and I protect her. But I couldn't. I'm useless.
Eugene: That might have been what it was like in Asserum-
Cassandra: Asterium
Eugene: -but that's not what it's like here. Here people take care of and protect each other.

That's all I have written for it. I imagine that Eugene can't get through to Cassandra, and she returns to the earth below, refusing to join the others in following Rapunzel.

I know that the story should have more about Rapunzel's relationship with the others, and not just Cassandra, but I imagine an important part of the story is when Rapunzel gets scared by something and flees very far away, to the arctic - and there, when she touches the ground, she becomes convinced she's trapped again. In terror she sends a matrix through the ground that eventually reaches where Cassandra's moping, and flowers grow in a line towards the north - Cassandra recognizes what it means immediately, and she takes off, following the flowers as they grow. She takes energy from the air's warmth and the sun's rays and makes it so she can run as long as she wants- until she reaches the sea.

Cassandra and the sea don't have a good track record. She almost drowned. But knowing she can't wait or try to find a ship, she sends her matrix deep into the ground, deeper than she ever had before, and reaches the heat in the Earth's mantle - and with all that energy, she summons enormous spikes of black rock for her to jump between over the sea towards the north. She begins leaping between them, trying to reach Rapunzel.

As she's moving, she goes into a storm, which knocks her into the ocean. Battered by waves and with no energy to work with, she barely manages to freeze the water under her into a raft that would float.

I considered having her pass out to be found by traders whose ship Cassandra then uses to continue north, so this part is in the air, but regardless she eventually reaches the arctic. She travels through the blizzard to find Rapunzel who's holding onto the stone under her, caught in a delusion that's a mix between her tower and being trapped as a flower. Cassandra tells Rapunzel that she's sorry she came so late, and that she couldn't protect her - but she will take care of her. And Cassandra picks Rapunzel up, and Rapunzel clings to her, and Cassandra carries her out of the arctic.

Which serves two purposes -
1) it's a mirror to both how the Sundrop and Moonstone had initially found each other, but this time, the Moonstone is able to go to the Sundrop and save her; and also to how the Moonstone had tried to find the Sundrop and sent out spikes to direct Rapunzel to the Dark Kingdom, but this time it's reversed with flowers instead of rocks and they both have memories of each other
2) and it continues the whole, "on Earth we both take care of and protect each other" that Eugene had said, which is again, a breaking of their natures. Cassandra will take care of her.

Anyway I suppose then there would be parts addressing Rapunzel's relationship with others and her healing but I'm here for cassunzel so that's all not fleshed out lol

Annnnd that's all I've got here